LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OR 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


M  X^4XC^1xUH^O< 


WHY 
EUROPE 
LEAVES 
HOME 


A  typical  morning  gathering  of  emigrants  at  the  vise  office  in  Warsaw. 
The  people  in  the  gallery  are  standing  four  deep.  The  serpentine 
line  on  the  floor,  only  a  small  part  of  which  appears  in  the  picture, 
is  nearly  two  hundred  yards  long.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  these  people 
are  Jews. 


WHY    EUROPE 
LEAVES     HOME 


A  true  account  of  the  reasons  which 
cause  Central  Europeans  to  overrun 
America  ^  which  lead  Russians 
to  rush  to  Constantinople  and 
other  fascinating  and  unpleasant 
places  ^  which  coax  Greek 
royalty  and  commoners  into  strange 
byways  and  hedges  $£  and  which 
induce  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen 
to  go  out  at  night.  4?  fc?  V? 


By      * 

KENNETH  L.  ROBERTS 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM    PHOTOGRAPHS 


From   accurate    and   de-propagandized   information   gathered  in 

England,  Scotland,  France,  Belgium,  Holland,  Germany,  Danaig, 

Poland,    Czecho-Slovakia,    Italy,    Turkey   and    Greece    in    the 

yemn    1920    and    1921 


THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PuHiihtrt 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  1921 
THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COM  PAN  v 

COPYRIGHT,  1922 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPAM? 


Printed  in  the  United  State*  of  Amtrie* 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWORTH  41  CO. 

BOOK   MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN.    N.    Y. 


To 
BOOTH  TARKINGTON 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME i 

PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION 35 

THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY 67 

THE  REMEDY 99 

WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE 121 

THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES 169 

THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK 221 

THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS 263 

SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH 315 


Why  Europe  Leaves  Home 


THE  center  of  Europe,  prior  to  the  attempt  of  the 
male  members  of  the  Hohenzollern  family  to  corner  the 
world  and  kick  it  brutally  in  the  face,  was  occupied  by 
the  large  and  fretful  combination  of  peoples  known  as  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Empire.  In  this  so-called  nation  dwelt 
Germans,  Czechs,  Slovaks,  Magyars,  Poles,  Croats,  Slov- 
enes, Rusins,  Rumanians,  Dalmatians,  Serbians,  Jews, 
Gipsies,  and  a  number  of  other  peculiar  folk.  When  an 
outsider  strolled  into  Austria-Hungary  and  tried  to  get  a 
quick  but  comprehensive  grasp  of  the  different  national 
groups  which  made  up  the  empire,  his  brain  reeled  with  a 
loud  buzzing  noise. 

Among  the  peoples  in  the  old  Austria-Hungary,  for 
example,  there  were  Slovaks,  Slovenes  and  Slavonians. 
The  newcomer,  hearing  these  names  for  the  first  time, 
usually  thinks  that  they  are  garbled  versions  of  the 
same  thing.  They  aren't,  however.  The  Slovenes  and  the 
Slovaks  are  hundreds  of  miles  apart.  The  Slovaks  hate  the 
Hungarians  and  their  Czech  rulers ;  the  Slovenes  hate  their 
Serb  rulers  and  the  Italians.  It  is  a  baffling  matter  at  first 
sight ;  and  even  travelers  frequently  speak  of  Jugo-Slovakia 
in  the  same  breath  with  Czecho-Slovakia.  Yet  there  is  no 
such  country  as  Jugo-Slovakia.  There  is  Czecho-Slovakia. 

I 


2  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  there  is  Jugo-Slavia.  There  are  plenty  of  Jugo- Slavs, 
but  no  Jugo- Slovaks.  It  is  all  very  strange  and  befuddling; 
but  in  time  one  learns  these  delicate  nuances,  just  as  one 
finally  learns  that  standard  time  is  an  hour  later  than  day- 
light-saving time — or  vice  versa,  whichever  it  is. 

The  people  in  the  old  Austria-Hungary  ranged  all  the 
way  from  the  refined  and  cultured  individuals  who  lived  in 
the  great  centers  like  Prague  and  Vienna  and  Budapest,  used 
whipped-cream  on  their  chocolate  and  murmured  muti- 
nously when  there  were  fewer  than  fifty  beautiful  women  in 
the  ballet  of  Faust,  down  to  the  hard-boiled  Rusins  who 
wore  sheepskin  undergarments  and  slept  on  the  mud  floor 
of  the  living-room  with  the  heifers  and  the  pigs.  They 
differed  widely  from  one  another  in  their  traditions,  their 
history,  their  religions,  their  languages,  their  culture  and 
their  national  costumes.  They  had  only  a  few  things  in  com- 
mon :  not  one  of  the  different  peoples  of  old  Austria-Hun- 
gary was  ever  satisfied  with  its  government ;  each  nationality 
had  a  bitter,  passionate  and  unwavering  hatred  for  at  least 
one  adjoining  nationality;  and  all  of  them  wanted  to  go  to 
America.  In  these  things  they  were  alike. 

During  the  thirty-five  years  before  the  war,  the  bulk  of 
the  immigrants  who  surged  so  freely  into  the  United  States 
came  from  three  countries — Austria-Hungary,  Italy  and 
Russia.  They  were  running  neck  and  neck  when  the  war 
broke ;  and  on  an  average  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  immi- 
grants were  entering  America  from  each  of  the  three  coun- 
tries. Austria-Hungary,  however,  showed  unmistakable 
signs  of  nosing  out  the  other  two.  In  the  ten  years  before 
the  war  broke  out,  2,347,636  immigrants  had  entered  the 
United  States  from  Austria-Hungary  as  against  2,196,884 
from  Italy  and  1,991,284  from  Russia.  In  the  big  immi- 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  3 

gration  year  of  1907,  Austria-Hungary  alone  sent  to 
America  the  staggering  total  of  338,452  emigrants.  This 
was  the  greatest  number  of  people  that  ever  moved  from 
one  country  to  another  country  in  one  year's  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  Part  of  them  went  because  the  agents 
of  steamship  lines  painted  glowing  pictures  of  the  ease  with 
which  money  could  be  made  in  America ;  part  of  them  went 
because  agents  of  big  manufacturing  concerns  circulated 
through  the  crowded  districts  and  offered  jobs  in  American 
mills  at  wages  which  seemed  fabulous  to  the  poor  peasant ; 
and  by  far  the  largest  part  went  because  relatives  and 
friends  and  acquaintances  who  had  already  gone  to  America 
wrote  back  to  their  home  towns  telling  of  easy  money  and 
bright  lights  and  fine  clothes,  and  filling  the  minds  of  the 
stay-at-homes  with  a  red-hot,  sizzling  desire  to  be  up  and 
doing  in  order  to  participate  in  the  delights  of  America — 
especially  in  the  easy-money  part. 

To-day  Austria-Hungary  no  longer  exists.  It  has 
become  Czecho-Slovakia,  Hungary,  Austria,  a  part  of 
Poland,  a  part  of  Rumania,  a  part  of  Italy  and  a  part  of 
Jugo-Slavia.  The  inhabitants  of  these  new  divisions  of  an 
old  empire  have  as  little  in  common  as  they  had  before  the 
war;  but  the  few  things  which  they  have  in  common  have 
grown  greatly  during  the  last  few  years.  They  hate  one 
another  even  more  passionately  than  they  hated  one  another 
in  1914;  they  are  even  more  dissatisfied  with  their  govern- 
ments, for  the  most  part,  than  they  used  to  be;  and  their 
longing  to  go  to  America  is  so  violent  and  poignant  and 
all-pervasive  that  they  would  willingly  permit  themselves  to 
be  kicked  all  the  way  from  Warsaw  to  Paris  or  from  Bel- 
grade to  Danzig — both  of  which  trips  would  require  a  vast 
amount  of  kicking,  to  say  nothing  of  a  frightful  amount  of 


4  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

wear  and  tear  on  the  garments  of  the  kickee — if  the  final 
kick  deposited  them  aboard  a  ship  bound  for  America.  They 
would  do  anything  to  get  to  America.  They  would  lie  with 
a  fluency  that  would  cause  the  bones  of  Baron  Munchhausen 
to  rattle  feverishly  in  his  grave;  they  would  steal  anything 
which  could  be  stolen  by  human  hands ;  probably  they  would 
willingly  commit  murder;  for  human  life  is  not  highly 
valued  in  Europe  at  the  present  time,  what  with  several 
years  of  war,  and  the  menace  of  Bolshevism,  and  the  low 
rate  of  exchange,  and  one  thing  and  another. 

Before  the  war  there  was  a  great  pother  over  the  vast 
quantities  of  immigrants  which  were  pouring  into  the 
United  States  each  year.  The  United  States  Immigration 
Commission  proved  conclusively  that  the  bulk  of  the  more 
recent  immigrants  from  Central  and  Southeastern  Europe 
hived  up  in  settlements  of  their  own,  where  they  retained 
the  customs  and  the  languages  and  the  ideals  of  the  coun- 
tries from  which  they  came,  and  failed  utterly  to  become 
Americans.  They  had  their  own  publications  and  occasion- 
ally their  own  laws.  They  were  too  frequently  the  sources 
of  unrest  and  dissatisfaction,  as  well  as  of  sedition  and  of 
innumerable  varieties  of  revolutionary  and  anarchistic  doc- 
trines. In  the  cant  phrase  of  the  day,  the  majority  of  the 
more  recent  immigrants  didn't  assimilate.  An  ostrich  could 
assimilate  a  croquet  ball  or  a  cobble-stone  with  about  the 
same  ease  that  America  assimilated  her  newcomers  from 
Central  and  Southeastern  Europe.  Most  of  them  seemed  to 
have  been  inoculated  against  assimilation  before  leaving 
home.  Their  standard  of  living  in  their  home  countries 
was  as  low  as  any  standard  of  living  could  possibly  be.  If 
it  had  been  any  lower,  it  would  have  ceased  to  be  a  standard, 
and  would  have  become  a  hole  or  socket. 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  5 

The  immigrants  brought  many  of  these  standards  with 
them,  and  clung  to  them  determinedly  in  America.  No 
matter  how  meager  their  wages  might  be,  they  lived  on  them 
handily  and  saved  money,  which  they  sent  back  home. 
That  was  what  most  of  them  came  to  America  for — to  save 
money  and  send  it  back  home.  Now  there  is  nothing  wrong 
with  the  saving  of  money  by  an  immigrant;  and  when  he 
has  saved  it,  he  is  entitled  to  do  what  he  pleases  with  it ;  for 
he  has  paid  for  the  money  with  hard  work.  But  it  is  a 
different  matter  when  great  numbers  of  men,  accustomed 
all  their  lives  to  living  on  starvation  rations,  come  to 
America  and  take  jobs  at  low  wages  and  then,  in  their 
determination  to  save  money,  crowd  into  wretched  quar- 
ters and  live  in  squalor  and  filth  and  darkness  on  a  fraction 
of  the  money  which  an  American  workman  must  spend  in 
order  to  live  decently.  Such  a  proceeding  lowers  the  stand- 
ard of  living  in  America.  The  1920  platform  of  the  Repub- 
lican party  voiced  the  opinion  of  most  political  economists 
when  it  declared  that,  "The  standard  of  living  and  the 
standard  of  citizenship  of  a  nation  are  its  most  precious 
possessions,  and  the  preservation  and  elevation  of  those 
standards  is  the  first  duty  of  our  Government,"  and  added 
that,  "The  immigration  policy  of  the  United  States  should 
be  such  as  to  insure  that  the  number  of  foreigners  in  the 
country  at  any  one  time  shall  not  exceed  that  which  can  be 
assimilated  with  reasonable  rapidity,  and  to  favor  immi- 
grants whose  standards  are  similar  to  ours."  No  prophet 
who  ever  lived,  and  no  student  of  immigration,  no  matter 
how  weighty  his  brain,  is  capable  of  figuring  out  the  num- 
ber of  foreigners  who  can  be  assimilated  by  the  United 
States  in  a  given  period  of  time.  If  they  are  allowed  to  live 
in  the  slums  and  Ghettos  and  foreign  settlements  in  which 


6  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

they  are  now  living,  they  can  not  be  assimilated.  There 
isn't  a  chance  of  it.  There  isn't  even  a  shadow  of  a  chance 
of  it.  Such  chance  as  there  is,  would,  in  fact,  have  to  stand 
twice  on  one  spot  in  order  to  cast  a  shadow.  The  people 
from  these  foreign  settlements  work  all  day  by  the  side  of 
other  aliens.  When  they  leave  their  work,  they  go  back 
to  crowded  homes  in  which  the  only  atmosphere  is  one  of 
dirt  and  Europe.  They  come  in  contact  with  practically 
nothing  which  can  be  regarded  as  an  Americanizing 
influence.  So  long  as  foreigners  are  permitted  to  enter  this 
country  and  segregate  themselves,  just  so  long  will  they 
resist  the  rudiments  of  assimilation.  Numbers  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  In  approaching  the  subject  from  that  angle, 
therefore,  the  Republican  platform  was  disseminating  a 
large  amount  of  hot  air.  The  idea  behind  the  hazy  words, 
however,  was  good.  The  idea  proclaimed  that  the  United 
States,  in  the  past,  had  bitten  off  more  than  it  could  chew 
as  regards  immigrants,  and  that  in  the  future  smaller  bites 
must  be  taken. 

This  attitude  on  immigration  came  about  as  a  result  of 
the  immense  numbers  of  immigrants  who  were  entering 
America  each  year  during  the  decade  before  the  war,  and 
the  difficulty  which  America  was  finding  in  digesting 
them.  But  the  pre-war  throngs  which  surged  into  America 
do  not  loom  so  large  when  compared  with  the  serried  ranks 
and  the  teeming  multitudes  which  to-day  are  anxiously 
awaiting  the  opportunity  to  break  all  surging  records 
between  Europe  and  America.  Given  a  free  field  and  no 
restrictions,  they  will  surge  to  such  an  extent  that  they  will, 
as  one  might  say,  turn  America  into  one  vast  surgery. 

In  this  we  are  able  to  observe  history  in  her  favorite 
pastime  of  repeating  herself  with  almost  deafening  loudness. 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  7 

The  Napoleonic  wars  left  Europe  wallowing  weakly  in 
an  economic  muddle  of  a  most  pernicious  sort.  The  quar- 
ter-century following  the  battle  of  Waterloo  saw  nearly  two 
million  people  immigrating  to  the  United  States  from  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  alone.  In  1818 — over  one  hundred 
years  ago — an  English  writer  named  Robert  Holditch  gave 
the  following  picture  of  the  economic  wars  which  followed 
Waterloo : 

"The  cry  of  distress  was  soon  heard  from  all  quarters, 
and  the  bankruptcy  of  our  merchants  and  tradesmen 
occurred  to  an  extent  hitherto  unknown.  These  failures 
involved  the  fate  of  thousands  connected  with  trade  and 
commerce;  the  opulent  became  insolvent;  many  of  the  mid- 
dle classes  descended  to  poverty ;  the  indigent  filled  the 
work-houses ;  the  local  taxes  pressed  with  intolerable  weight 
upon  those  who  were  able  to  pay ;  and  the  situation  of  many 
who  contributed  was  scarcely  superior  to  the  wretched 
inmates  of  the  workhouse.  A  frightful  national  debt  still 
presses,  and  the  united  demands  of  local  and  national  taxes 
have  influenced,  and  still  do  influence,  thousands  of  our 
countrymen  to  abandon  their  native  shores,  and  to  com- 
mence, as  it  were,  a  new  existence  on  those  of  the  Atlantic." 

Mr.  Holditch's  words,  except  for  being  too  mild,  apply 
to-day  to  every  country  in  Europe.  They  apply  particularly 
to  Russia,  Poland,  and  the  lands  that  used  to  be  Austria- 
Hungary.  Throughout  those  countries  the  city-dwellers  who 
once  were  opulent  are  living  for  the  most  part  in  utter  mis- 
ery; an  income  which  five  years  ago  would  support  an  entire 
family  in  luxury  for  a  year  is  to-day  insufficient  to  buy  a 
single  suit  of  clothes.  Owing  to  the  worthlessness  of  Central 
European  currency,  and  to  its  violent  fluctuation  from  week 
to  week,  merchants  and  farmers  are  loath  to  part  with  any- 


8  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

thing  except  for  its  equivalent  in  other  commodities.  The 
erstwhile  nobility  has  sold  its  furniture,  its  carpets,  and  even 
its  beds,  in  order  to  obtain  food ;  the  poor  are  existing  on  less 
food  and  poorer  food  than  is  fed  to  an  American  dog 
which  is  being  conditioned  for  a  dog-show.  There  are 
millions  of  people  in  Central  Europe  who  have  been  unable 
to  buy  clothes  for  years,  and  who  will  be  unable  to  buy  them 
for  years  to  come.  They  are  making  clothes  out  of  window 
curtains,  carpets,  meal-sacks.  These  people  used  to  be 
affluent  and  comfortable.  They  used  to  travel,  read  new 
books,  dine  at  good  restaurants;  to-day  they  have  noth- 
ing, they  see  nothing,  they  do  nothing  except  hope 
vainly  for  relief  from  their  miserable  existence.  These  are 
the  city-dwellers.  The  farmers  are  infinitely  more  com- 
fortable, being  self-sustaining ;  and  they  will  continue  to  be 
so  until  the  city-dwellers  in  desperation  roam  the  country- 
side in  armed  bands  and  take  by  force  whatever  the  farmers 
have.  The  misery  which  followed  the  Napoleonic  wars  is 
a  weak  and  puny  misery  compared  to  the  malicious,  fero- 
cious, relentless  old  John  D.  Misery  who  has  Central  Europe 
by  the  throat  to-day. 

Careful  investigation  in  various  parts  of  Europe  has 
shown  conclusively  that  if  the  United  States  should  remove 
the  ban  on  immigrants,  emigration  from  Ireland  to  the 
United  States  would  be  at  least  three  times  as  large  in  the 
ensuing  five  years  as  it  was  in  the  five  years  before  the 
war ;  that  five  million  people  would  emigrate  from  Germany 
in  the  ten  years  following  the  lifting  of  the  ban,  and  that 
the  majority  of  them  would  steer  straight  for  America ;  that 
emigration  from  Italy  to  America  for  many  years  would 
be  limited  only  by  the  number  of  passenger  steamers 
assigned  to  the  task  of  carrying  immigrants  to  America  from 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  9 

Italy.  The  same  thing  that  is  true  of  Italy  is  true  of  the  new 
nations  which  used  to  be  Austria-Hungary.  Immigrants  to 
America  from  these  nations  would  fill  every  ship  that  is 
supplied  for  that  purpose  for  years  to  come — unless  America 
becomes  permanently  convinced  that  her  chances  of  assimi- 
lating this  mass  of  humanity  is  even  less  than  a  humming- 
bird's chances  of  assimilating  a  box  of  carpet-tacks. 

Most  of  the  top  layer  of  the  old  Austro-Hungarian  Em- 
pire has  become  Czecho-Slovakia.  Czecho-Slovakia  is 
located  in  the  middle  of  Europe  and  has  the  outline  of  an 
old,  broken-down  tennis  shoe  or  sneaker.  On  the  front  part 
of  the  Czecho-Slovak  sneaker,  extending  from  the  top  of  the 
instep  to  the  tip  of  the  toe,  there  is  a  large  growth  or  wen 
which  was  also  a  part  of  Austria-Hungary.  This  is  the  old 
Austrian  crownland  of  Galicia,  and  it  is  now  the  southern 
end  of  Poland,  just  as  it  has  been,  off  and  on,  ever  since  the 
eleventh  century.  One  of  the  most  annoying  features  about 
Central  Europe  is  the  way  in  which  everything  changed 
hands  every  little  while  in  the  old  days,  so  that  at  the  pres- 
ent time  everybody  claims  everything  in  sight,  whether  it 
belongs  to  him  or  not.  Galicia,  however,  is  now  a  part  of 
Poland;  and  a  large  percentage  of  the  emigrants  from 
Poland  to  America  are  Jews  from  Galicia. 

In  Poland  alone  there  are  as  many  people  desirous  of 
emigrating  to  the  United  States  as  emigrated  to  this  country 
from  all  of  Europe  during  any  three  of  the  big  pre-war 
emigration  years.  A  commissioner  of  the  Hebrew  Shelter- 
ing and  Immigrant  Aid  Society  of  America,  after  making  a 
trip  of  investigation  through  Poland,  stated  that,  "If  there 
were  in  existence  a  ship  that  could  hold  three  million  human 
beings,  the  three  million  Jews  of  Poland  would  board  it  and 
escape  to  America."  This  is,  of  course,  an  exaggeration, 


10  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

but  not  so  wild  an  exaggeration  as  one  might  think.  And 
out  of  the  more  than  twenty  million  Poles  in  Poland,  there 
are  great  numbers  who  wish  to  fold  their  spare  trousers  and 
silently  steal  away,  or  noisily  steal  away,  or  steal  away  in 
any  old  way  so  long  as  they  can  get  to  that  glad  bourne 
whence  no  traveler  returns  without  upward  of  five  thou- 
sand dollars  in  undepreciated  American  currency  reposing 
coyly  against  his  manly  chest. 

The  report  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Immigration 
shows  that  the  number  of  Jews  entering  the  United  States 
in  the  few  years  before  the  war  was  very  large.  In  1904, 
106,236  entered  the  country.  The  high- water  mark  was 
reached  in  1906,  when  153,748  Jews  disembarked  on  our 
shores.  Nineteen  hundred  fourteen  was  another  good  year ; 
138,051  coming  during  the  twelve  months  ending  June  30, 
1914.  The  tremendous  influx  of  Jews  into  the  United 
States  is  shown  in  the  American  Jewish  Year  Book,  which 
estimates  that  in  1818  there  were  only  3,000  Jews  in  the 
whole  country,  whereas  in  1918  there  were  1,500,000  Jews 
in  New  York  City  alone. 

A  large  part  of  this  Jewish  immigration  came  from 
Austrian  Poland,  Russian  Poland  and  German  Poland;  for 
nearly  one-third  of  all  the  Jews  in  the  world  are  concen- 
trated there.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  in  the  Middle 
Ages  the  different  nations  of  Europe  expelled  the  Jews,  and 
Poland  was  designated  as  the  place  where  they  might  settle. 
When  Poland  was  partitioned,  Russian  Poland  was  made 
the  Jewish  Pale  of  Settlement  for  the  Russian  Empire — 
the  place  where  the  Jews  could  live  without  persecution. 
The  Jews  in  these  districts  are  anxious  to  come  to  America, 
not  because  they  are  oppressed  to  a  greater  extent  than  they 
used  to  be,  nor  because  they  are  in  greater  economic  dis- 
tress, but  because  America  has  been  very  heavily  advertised 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  11 

during  the  last  few  years  as  the  source  of  all  good  things  in 
the  world.  The  economic  distress  of  these  wretched  people, 
for  one  reason  or  another,  has  always  been  so  close  to  the 
extreme  limit  that  they  were  dulled  to  distress's  finer  points. 
If  they  lived  on  beans  and  beats  in  1912,  their  distress  didn't 
increase  if  the  beans  were  moldy  and  the  beats  decayed  in 
1920.  Any  lot  was  preferable  to  their  own;  and  the  most 
preferable  lot,  of  course,  was  the  one  which  carried  with  it 
the  most  money.  The  Jews  of  Poland  have  long  believed 
that  any  energetic  person  could  become  wealthy  in  America 
by  the  delightfully  simple  method  of  running  around  the 
streets  and  prying  the  gold  coins  from  between  the  paving- 
stones  with  a  nut-pick.  The  big  steamship  lines  had  thou- 
sands of  agents  scattered  over  Galicia.  Each  emigrant 
which  an  agent  handed  over  to  a  steamship  line  meant  a  com- 
mission for  the  agent.  Consequently  if  they  could  persuade 
anybody  to  go  to  America  by  assuring  him  that  American 
hens  were  in  the  habit  of  laying  diamond-studded  earrings 
on  Mondays  and  platinum  watches  on  Fridays,  they  would 
gladly  do  so.  And  in  many  cases  they  did.  The  steamship 
agents  who  stimulate  emigration  have  vanished;  but  the 
fairy-tales  which  they  told  about  America  are  still  related  to 
goggle-eyed  infants  by  long-whiskered  Galician  grand- 
fathers who  still  hope  to  choke  a  few  diamond  lavallieres  out 
of  American  hens  before  they  leave  this  vale  of  tears. 

The  old  days  of  having  to  hunt  for  money  in  America 
have  been  superseded  by  an  era  during  which  Americans 
force  money  on  foreigners.  The  American  Relief  Ware- 
house scheme,  which  is  easily  the  most  effective  relief  idea 
ever  evolved,  was  originated  by  Herbert  Hoover.  Ware- 
houses have  been  secured  all  over  Europe  and  stocked  with 
bundles  of  American  food.  Destitute  persons  in  the  coun- 
tries of  Central  Europe  send  postals  to  relatives  or  friends 


12  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

in  America  asking  for  help,  whereat  the  relatives  or  friends 
buy  Food  Drafts  at  American  banks  in  the  names  of  their 
European  friends.  The  names  are  sent  to  Europe,  and  pack- 
ages of  food  are  at  once  delivered  to  the  persons  named. 

In  order  to  facilitate  the  working  of  this  American 
Relief  Warehouse  scheme,  the  American  Relief  Administra- 
tions in  different  European  countries  got  out  posters 
which  at  a  distance,  look  like  American  flags.  "Do  you 
have  relatives  or  friends  in  America?"  ask  these  posters. 
If  so,  they  continue,  one  only  needs  to  send  cards  to  them  in 
order  to  get  food. 

In  the  old  days,  the  steamship  lines  got  out  posters  for 
European  circulation  depicting  the  glories  of  the  life  in 
America,  including  a  solid  gold  Statue  of  Liberty  and  sky- 
scrapers edged  with  two-karat  diamonds.  These  posters 
were  regarded  in  America  as  immigration-stimulators,  and 
were  frowned  on  with  a  large  amount  of  thoroughness.  But 
no  steamship  line  ever  got  out  a  poster  which  was  more  of 
an  immigration-stimulator  than  the  American  Relief  Ware- 
house posters.  They  convey  the  distinct  idea  that  every  one 
in  America  has  so  much  money  that  he  is  willing  to  give 
away  a  large  part  of  it  to  almost  any  one — so  much 
money  that  he  hasn't  the  slightest  idea  what  to  do  with  it. 

Even  more  potent  than  the  posters,  as  an  immigration 
stimulator,  has  been  the  activities  of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant 
Aid  Society,  which  I  will  mention  in  more  detail  in  a  future 
chapter.  Excellent  advertisements,  moreover,  for  the  ad- 
vantages which  America  has  to  offer  are  the  great  amount 
of  charity  dispensed  throughout  Europe  and  the  large 
amount  of  money  sent  back  to  Europe  by  those  who  have 
already  emigrated.  In  Poland,  for  example,  there  are  a 
great  many  large  Hebrew  communities  which  have  no 


Copyright    Fudfru-ood   rf    rndericood 

Herbert  Hoover,  Secretary  of  Commerce,  and  originator  of  the  Amer- 
ican Relief  Warehouse  Scheme,— The  most  effective  relief  idea  ever 
evolved. 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  13 

visible  means  of  subsistence  except  the  money  which  is  sent 
back  by  relatives  who  have  gone  to  America. 

The  American  Consulate  in  Warsaw  is  located  above  the 
Discount  Bank  of  Warsaw.  As  I  mounted  the  stairs  on  my 
first  visit  to  the  American  Consulate,  I  heard  the  peculiar 
combination  of  wail  and  moan  and  shriek  which  is  usually 
made  by  a  frightened  mob  attempting  to  escape  bodily  harm. 
Investigation  led  me  to  a  small  balcony  over  the  main  bank- 
ing-room of  the  Discount  Bank.  It  was  an  ordinary  bank, 
like  the  average  American  bank.  The  floor  was  about 
eighteen  paces  square,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  the  con- 
ventional tellers'  and  cashiers'  cages:  and  every  available 
inch  of  floor-space  was  occupied  by  a  howling,  shriek- 
ing, pushing,  squirming  mass  of  humanity  attempting  to 
collect  money  which  had  been  sent  from  America.  All  of 
them  were  Jews.  There  wasn't,  so  far  as  I  could  judge, 
room  for  another  person  in  the  room.  The  component  parts 
of  this  howling  mob  were  fighting  to  get  to  one  of  the  two 
windows  where  they  exchanged  slips  of  paper  for  money. 
Venerable  old  men  with  long  beards  and  faces  distorted  by 
passion  clawed  remorselessly  at  women  who  were  kicking 
and  biting  in  their  attempt  to  forge  ahead.  Old  women, 
whose  strength  was  insufficient  to  cope  with  that  of  the  men 
around  them,  were  forced  to  their  knees  and  trampled  until 
pain  gave  them  enough  strength  to  claw  their  way  upright 
again.  Men  who  reached  the  grilled  windows  were  torn 
from  their  places,  cursing  and  screaming  at  the  top  of  their 
lungs,  and  replaced  by  disheveled  maniacs  who  were  in  turn 
wrenched  from  their  positions.  A  hand  would  shoot  out 
from  the  crowd,  clutch  a  woman  by  the  hair  and  haul  her 
backward  until  her  eyes  threatened  to  pop  from  her  head. 
I  saw  one  wild  man,  with  little  corkscrew  curls  hanging 


14  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

down  in  front  of  his  ears  and  a  beard  shot  with  gray,  pull 
back  a  woman  in  front  of  him  by  clawing  at  her  face  and 
getting  two  fingers  in  the  corner  of  her  mouth.  With 
mouth  distended  and  face  distorted  her  head  came  back  and 
back.  She  stopped  screaming  and  set  her  teeth  on  his  fin- 
gers until  he  in  turn  screamed  with  anguish.  The  place  was 
a  den  of  wild  beasts;  and  the  stench  which  rose  from  the 
struggling,  squirming  bodies  was  sickening. 

Between  ninety  and  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  our  immi- 
grants from  Poland  at  present  are  Jews ;  and  the  conditions 
under  which  the  Jews  of  Poland  live  are,  to  put  it  conserva- 
tively, very  bad  indeed.  They  herd  together  in  cities,  and 
the  overcrowding  and  the  filth  and  the  squalor  of  the 
Ghettos  of  Poland  are  terrible.  This  overcrowding,  and  the 
existence  of  Ghettos,  are  usually  blamed  on  the  oppressors  of 
the  Jews  by  sentimentalists  who  favor  unrestricted  immi- 
gration. The  sentimentalists  declare  that  the  Ghetto  is 
kept  in  existence  by  oppressors  so  that  the  Hebrews  can 
be  segregated  and  controlled.  New  York's  Ghetto,  however, 
is  almost  on  a  par  with  the  Ghettos  of  Lodz  or  Warsaw  as 
far  as  overcrowding  goes.  So  is  London's  Ghetto  and 
Vienna's  Ghetto;  but  in  none  of  these  cities  is  any  effort 
made  to  segregate  and  control  the  Jews.  They  segregate 
themselves. 

The  Jews  of  Poland  never  go  in  for  agriculture.  They 
stick  to  the  cities  and  engage  entirely  in  trade.  In  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  the  Jews  of  Europe  were  prohibited  by  law  from 
engaging  in  agriculture,  but  they  were  allowed  to  be  usurers 
— an  occupation  which  was  forbidden  to  Christians.  This 
is  probably  the  reason  why  the  present-day  Jew  is  always  a 
trader  in  Poland  and  the  near-by  countries.  If  he  is  engaged 
in  any  sort  of  work  at  all,  he  is  either  a  usurer,  a  pedler,  a 
liquor-dealer,  a  Schieber  or  food-profiteer,  or  a  small  shop- 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  15 

keeper.  Even  the  most  liberal-minded  authorities  on  immi- 
gration state  that  the  Jews  of  Poland  are  human  parasites, 
living  on  one  another  and  on  their  neighbors  of  other  races 
by  means  which  too  often  are  underhanded,  that  they  con- 
tinue to  exist  in  the  same  way  after  coming  to  America, 
and  that  they  are  therefore  highly  undesirable  as  immigrants. 
Even  now,  in  Central  Europe,  when  a  thing  is  accomplished 
in  a  dishonest  or  illegal  manner,  it  is  spoken  of  as  being 
done  Jiidischer  Weise,  or  in  the  Jewish  manner.  This  is 
pointed  out  by  Captain  P.  Wright  in  the  report  of  the  British 
Mission  to  Poland — a  British  government  publication. 

In  the  old  clothes  market  of  Warsaw  the  Hebrews  from 
the  Ghetto  daily  carry  on  their  trading  operations.  Hun- 
dreds of  booths  are  filled  with  tattered  garments,  scraps  of 
cloth,  bits  of  rag,  old  shoe  laces,  and  innumerable  useless  and 
worthless  objects  such  as  broken  bottles  and  bent  tin-cans, 
pieces  of  old  combs,  parts  of  frying-pans  and  what-not. 
Similar  piles  of  rubbish  lie  on  the  bare  ground.  Among  the 
booths  and  piles  wander  the  traders  poking  at  various  ob- 
jects with  their  canes,  dickering  with  one  another  as  to 
prices,  screaming  wildly  at  each  other  in  the  heat  of  bargain- 
ing, and  carrying  off  little  armfuls  of  junk  which  can  be  of 
no  possible  use  except  as  the  basis  of  future  trading  opera- 
tions.* 


*Chelsea,  Massachusetts,  is  a  great  center  for  Polish  Jews.  The 
following  quotation  from  The  Boston  Globe  shows  the  striking  manner 
in  which  Warsaw  conditions  are  reproduced  in  America : 

"All  down  Twenty-eighth  Street  and  extending  over  to  Auburn, 
Elm  and  Fiske  Streets  (Chelsea)  are  the  haunts  of  the  junk  men. 
Here  are  yards  and  yards  and  shed  after  shed  piled  high  and  bursting 
with  junk. 

"Great  piles  of  it — rusty  chains  in  huge  mounds;  mountains  of 
scrap  metal;  litters  of  decrepit  wagons  and  dismembered  autos — a 
chaos  of  everything  under  the  sun  or  above  it — is  here. 

"In  the  shacks,  too,  it  is  as  bad.  Enormous  bales  of  paper,  bags  and 
magazines  fill  the  place  till  the  walls  seem  bulging.  If  a  match  ever 
fell  in  here 1 


16  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

On  one  occasion  I  was  questioning  a  crowd  of  Polish 
Jews  as  to  their  sentiments  in  regard  to  going  to  Palestine. 
They  agreed  that  Palestine,  of  course,  was  the  ideal  place 
to  gd,  but  that  the  jobs  were  in  America. 

"Suppose,"  I  said,  "that  there  were  an  equal  number  of 
jobs  in  America  and  in  Palestine.  To  which  would  you 
rather  go  then  ?" 

The  spokesman,  after  going  into  conterence  with  several 
others,  stated  that  they  would  still  choose  America  because 
they  had  no  relatives  in  Palestine. 

I  told  them  that  more  than  two  million  were  out  of  work 
in  America.  "Suppose  that  you  can't  get  a  job,"  I  said, 
« — and  you  can't.  What  then?" 

A  voice  from  the  crowd  spoke  up  promptly. 

"Luftgeschaft!"  it  said — and  the  crowd  nodded  and 
laughed. 

Luftgeschaft  means  "air  business."  Among  the  German. 
Polish  and  Russian  Jews  there  are  literally  thousands  who 
have  no  business  at  all,  and  no  regular  income.  They  turn 
a  penny  honestly  or  dishonestly  whenever  or  wherever  they 
can;  and  even  the  Jews  themselves  will  admit  that  they  do 
it  dishonestly  far  more  often  than  they  do  it  honestly.  This 
is  "air  business."  It  is  a  calling  which  is  peculiar  to  Jews  in 
Central  Europe;  and  the  people  who  follow  it  are  called 


"All  in  all,  it  is  a  place  that  is  of  the  Old  World.  The  people  are 
entirely  Jews,  or  of  that  descent,  and  in  the  wild  turmoil  of  loading 
and  unloading,  backing  and  filling  of  the  jumble  of  teams  and  arro- 
gant auto  trucks,  the  strange  speech  and  movements  of  the  workers 
and  spectators,  with  attendant  dust  and  confusion,  one  is  apt  to  think 
of  the  old  Italian,  Dante,  who  wrote  famously  about  a  dream  that  he 
had  of  descending  into  the  lower  regions. 

"Twenty  years  ago  one  firm  started  in  business  and  their  success 
attracted  the  huge  tide  of  Russian  Hebrew  immigration  to  Chelsea; 
they  form  one  of  the  largest  of  the  city's  many  industries  to-day. 
Through  every  suburb  and  city  of  Greater  Boston  the  collectors  roam, 
and  the  chances  are  that  when  you  sell  your  junk  it  goes  to  Chelsea." 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  17 

Luftmenschen  or  "air  men."  They  are  the  true  human 
parasites ;  and  great  numbers  of  them  are  found  among-  the 
emigrants  from  Poland  to  America.  Landing  in  America 
when  jobs  are  hard  to  get  they  will  at  once  start  their  air 
business — just  as  so  many  thousands  of  them  have  done  in 
the  past. 

The  Ghettos  themselves  are  depressing  spectacles.  The 
streets  are  lined  with  little  shops  whose  sign-boards  depict 
the  articles  on  sale  within.  The  artists  are  not  worldbeaters, 
and  some  of  the  pictures  are  rather  befuddling,  for  they 
make  bologna  sausages  look  like  carving-knives  and  give  a 
woman's  shoe  the  severe  outlines  of  a  coal-hod.  At  inter- 
vals between  the  shops  there  are  little  archways  leading 
into  dirty  courtyards;  and  around  the  courtyards  rise  the 
tenement  houses  in  which  the  prospective  emigrants  live. 
There  was  one  tenement  house  in  Warsaw  in  which  three 
thousand  persons  were  living.  It  didn't  look  large,  but  every 
inch  of  space  was  utilized.  There  were  families  sleeping 
under  staircases  and  living  along  the  walls  of  hallways. 
Three  families  of  eight,  ten,  and  even  fifteen  people  apiece 
were  living  together  in  one  medium-sized  room  with  no  par- 
titions of  any  sort  to  separate  them.  The  cellar,  as  stuffy 
and  dark  as  a  mine-tunnel,  was  crowded  with  people.  These 
people,  and  the  people  in  scores  of  other  buildings  which  I 
visited  in  the  Jewish  quarter,  lived  exclusively  on  black 
bread,  beans,  bad  beets  and  semi-rotted  potatoes.  They 
lived  on  such  fare  as  this  long  before  the  war.  Under  the 
Russians,  the  Jews  of  Russian  Poland  were  oppressed  in 
various  ways ;  and  on  this  oppression  is  blamed  the  poverty 
of  the  bulk  of  them.  In  Galicia,  or  Austrian  Poland,  the 
Jews  had  far  more  freedom  of  movement  and  far  fewer 
restrictions.  Yet  Jew  has  always  exploited  Jew  so  remorse- 


i8  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

lessly  in  Galicia  that  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  that 
vast  Jewish  reservoir  are  and  have  always  been  perilously 
near  the  starvation-point.  These  are  the  conditions  which 
exist  in  all  Jewish  Ghettos  in  Poland ;  and  the  standards  of 
life  in  them  are  the  standards  of  life  which  their  residents 
bring  to  America  with  them. 

In  addition  to  the  Jews  who  wish  to  enter  the  United 
States  from  Poland,  there  are  the  Poles  themselves  to  be 
considered;  and  it  should  be  distinctly  understood  at  the 
outset  that  no  ordinary  picayune  considerer  is  capable  of 
doing  justice  to  the  Polish  immigrant.  In  numbers  the 
Poles  crowd  close  up  behind  the  South  Italians  and  the 
Jews.  Back  in  1900,  just  a  shade  under  47,000  Poles  came 
to  America  to  seek  their  fortune.  Five  years  later  more  than 
102,000  came.  The  big  immigration  year,  1907,  saw 
138,000  Poles  entering  the  country;  while  during  the  year 
1913  over  174,000  poured  in. 

It  is  difficult  to  obtain  an  estimate  of  the  number  of 
Poles  who  wish  to  immigrate  to  the  United  States,  because 
of  the  reluctance  of  the  Polish  government  to  do  anything 
which  might  be  regarded  as  encouraging  emigration.  For 
one  thing  Poland  needs  young  men  for  the  army  as  long  as 
there  is  a  Bolshevik  menace;  for  another  thing  an  agreement 
has  been  made  with  France  whereby  thousands  of  Polish 
laborers  are  being  shipped  to  the  devastated  regions  of 
France  under  contract,  to  help  in  the  work  of  reconstruction. 
Those  who  are  going  to  America  are  the  wives  and  families 
of  immigrants  who  left  Poland  some  time  ago,  and  who  are 
now  sending  enough  money  back  to  Poland  to  enable  their 
families  to  join  them.  The  wives  and  families  of  Polish 
emigrants  who  are  being  sent  for,  however,  are  far  less  in 
number  than  the  wives  and  families  of  Jews.  This  is 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  19 

because  young  Poles  are  returning  to  Poland  in  great  num- 
bers, lured  in  most  instances  by  touching  accounts  of  the 
flourishing  young  republic  of  Poland  which  appeared  in 
many  of  the  middle  western  and  western  newspapers  soon 
after  the  end  of  the  great  war,  and  also  greatly  attracted  by 
the  large  number  of  Polish  marks  which  can  be  obtained 
in  exchange  for  each  American  dollar.  Those  who  return, 
or  who  plan  to  return  in  the  near  future,  don't  send  back  for 
their  families.  The  Jews,  on  the  other  hand,  never  come 
back  to  Poland.  They  get  out,  stay  out  and  send  for  their 
families.  Their  one  desire  is  to  get  so  far  away  from  Poland 
that  the  cost  of  sending  a  post-card  back  to  their  old  home 
will  be  in  the  neighborhood  of  four  dollars. 

The  Poles,  many  of  them,  come  to  America  with  the  idea 
of  earning  enough  money  to  go  back  and  buy  a  farm.  Most 
of  them  are  peasants — fine,  upstanding,  hard-working  men 
and  women  who,  when  they  settle  permanently  in  the  United 
States,  with  the  idea  of  learning  English  and  absorbing 
American  ideals,  become  citizens  of  whom  the  American 
nation  can  justly  be  proud.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the 
Italians  who  come  to  America  with  the  intention  of  becom- 
ing truly  American;  of  the  Slovaks  and  the  Magyars  and 
the  Serbs  and  all  the  rest  of  the  people  in  Central  and 
Southeastern  Europe  who  come  for  that  purpose.  But 
when  they  come  to  America,  as  most  of  them  do,  solely  to 
get  the  money  which  will  enable  them  to  go  back  to  their 
own  country  and  lord  it  over  their  former  companions,  they 
sacrifice  everything  to  money-getting. 

Ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  of  the  thousands  of 
Poles  who  have  returned  to  Poland  from  America  since  the 
war  are,  like  the  Germans  and  the  Irish  and  the  South 
Italians  and  the  North  Italians,  keenly  desirous  of  turning 


20  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

around  and  rushing  back  to  dear  old  America.  Food  is 
very  scarce  and  very  expensive;  and  the  constantly  rising 
prices  and  the  constantly  fluctuating  rates  of  exchange  play 
havoc  with  the  American  dollars  on  which  they  depend  for 
so  much  luxury. 

It  is  difficult,  as  I  have  said,  to  get  the  figures  on  the 
number  of  Poles  who  would  go  to  America  in  the  next  few 
years  if  they  could,  but  this  much  is  certain:  if  America  ever 
relaxes  her  immigration  law  for  a  moment,  the  number,  as 
in  Italy,  will  be  limited  only  by  the  space  which  the  steam- 
ship companies  allot  to  emigrants. 

Then  there  is  Czecho- Slovakia  to  be  considered. 
Czecho-Slovakia  is  only  the  top  layer  of  the  old  Austro- 
Hungarian  Empire.  Its  area  is  less  than  one-quarter  of 
the  territory  which  used  to  be  Austria-Hungary ;  if  the  bars 
were  to  be  let  down  on  immigration  Czecho-Slovakia  alone 
would  for  some  years  send  to  America  as  many  immigrants 
each  year  as  all  Austria-Hungary  used  to  send — unless  there 
were  an  insufficient  number  of  steamships  to  carry  the  mob. 
In  the  eleven  years  before  the  war,  Austria-Hungary  sent 
us  two  and  one-half  million  people — two  and  one-half 
million  aliens  who  couldn't  speak  our  language  and  who 
knew  no  more  about  our  form  of  government  than  they 
did  about  the  Coleoptera  of  the  British  Islands.  Practically 
all  of  them,  viewed  individually,  were  hard-working,  well- 
meaning,  likable  persons.  Even  the  most  backward,  illiter- 
ate, dirty,  thick-headed  peasants  of  Southeastern  Europe 
have  their  excellent  points.  One  who  lives  among  them 
sympathizes  with  them  and  longs  to  better  their  lot.  Taken 
in  the  mass,  however,  and  viewed  from  an  American  stand- 
point, it  is  no  more  possible  to  make  Americans  out  of  a 
great  many  of  them  than  it  is  possible  to  make  a  race-horse 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  21 

out  of  a  pug  dog.  If  two  immigrants  from  backward  dis- 
tricts of  the  old  Austria-Hungary  were  to  be  brought  to 
America  and  placed  in  an  American  home  with  two  intelli- 
gent Americans  who  could  devote  their  entire  lifetime  to 
Americanizing  these  backward  aliens,  they  might  succeed  in 
making  Americans  out  of  them  and  getting  a  genuinely 
American  point  of  view  into  their  heads.  They  might,  I  say ; 
but  even  devoting  all  their  time  to  it  they'd  probably  fail. 
These  people  are  inconceivably  backward.  They  wear 
clothing  which  seems  to  have  ripened  on  them  for  years, 
and  they  sleep  in  wretched  hovels  with  sheep  and  cows  and 
pigs  and  poultry  scattered  among  them.  They  have  been 
so  for  a  great  many  centuries.  It  is  almost  impossible  for 
them  to  slough  the  results  of  heredity  and  environment. 
Placed  in  slums,  the  mental  outlook  of  the  immigrants  would 
be  just  what  it  was  in  their  old  homes.  Since  most  of  the 
immigration  from  the  old  Austria-Hungary  came  from  the 
most  backward  districts,  and  since  it  will  continue  to  come 
from  those  same  districts  in  the  future  unless  it  is  rigorously 
restricted,  that  fact  should  be  borne  in  mind  by  all  who  wish 
to  see  a  united  America. 

Czecho-Slovakia  is  a  good  example  of  a  European 
country  in  which  various  peoples  lie  around  in  undigested 
lumps.  The  assimilation  has  been  bad,  and  is  bad  and  always 
will  be  bad. 

Assimilation  hadn't  been  any  too  good  in  the  United 
States  for  the  twenty  years  prior  to  the  war.  If  more  and 
more  immigrants  continue  to  pour  in,  and  assimilation  con- 
tinues bad,  one  of  two  things  will  inevitably  happen :  either 
the  United  States  will  develop  large  numbers  of  separate 
racial  groups,  as  distinct  as  those  which  exist  in  Czecho- 
slovakia, or  America  will  be  populated  by  a  mongrel  race 


22  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

entirely  different  from  the  present  American  people  as  we 
know  them  to-day.  Our  climate  may,  as  some  claim,  change 
the  stature  of  immigrants,  but  nothing  can  alter  the  shape 
of  their  skulls  or  the  distinct  racial  traits  that  have  char- 
acterized them  through  the  centuries. 

Races  can  not  be  cross-bred  without  mongrelization,  any 
more  than  breeds  of  dogs  can  be  cross-bred  without  mon- 
grelization.  The  American  nation  was  founded  and  devel- 
oped by  the  Nordic  race,  but  if  a  few  more  million  mem- 
bers of  the  Alpine,  Mediterranean  and  Semitic  races  are 
poured  among  us,  the  result  must  inevitably  be  a  hybrid 
race  of  people  as  worthless  and  futile  as  the  good-for-noth- 
ing mongrels  of  Central  America  and  Southeastern 
Europe. 

At  one  end  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  state  live  approxi- 
mately six  million  Czechs,  otherwise  known  as  Bohemians 
and  Moravians,  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  about  three  million 
Germans — or,  more  properly,  German-Austrians.  The 
Czechs,  like  the  bulk  of  the  Russians,  Poles,  Slovaks  and 
Serbs,  are  Slavs;  but  they  are  the  most  advanced  of  the 
Slavs  because  they  have  been  exposed  for  so  many  years 
to  the  iron  rule  of  Austria  and  to  Austrian  neatness  and 
Austrian  business  methods.  This  statement  will  deeply 
offend  the  Czechs  in  America,  and  many  Americans  of 
Czech  descent.  They  will  bitterly  resent  the  statement  that 
they  owe  anything  at  all  to  Austria.  America  has  several 
hundred  thousand  loyal  citizens  of  Czech  origin  who  would 
unquestionably  stand  by  America  in  case  of  need,  just  as 
millions  of  loyal  citizens  of  German  origin  stood  by  her 
during  the  war.  None  the  less,  there  are  thousands  of 
Czech-Americans  who  fly  into  spasms  of  rage  whenever 
they  hear  any  statement  about  Czecho-Slovakia  which  is  not 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  23 

complimentary  or  which  does  not  agree  with  their  ideas  of 
the  fitness  of  things.  They  are  not  interested  in  seeing  the 
people  of  this  country  get  all  the  facts  about  their  mother 
country.  They  only  want  them  to  have  the  favorable  facts. 
This  is  a  common  failing  of  many  immigrants  who  have 
become  naturalized  citizens  of  the  United  States.  Their 
first  love  is  their  mother  country.  They  forget  that  in 
becoming  American  citizens  they  "absolutely  and  forever 
renounce  all  allegiance  and  fidelity  to  any  foreign  country." 
Given  a  cause  on  which  to  unite,  they  have  no  hesitation  in 
pursuing  an  emphatically  un-American  course.  Many  of 
them  would  be  overjoyed  to  embroil  America  in  a  war  with 
a  foreign  country  if  by  so  doing  they  could  further  the 
interests  of  the  country  of  their  origin.  Let  them  get  to 
thinking  they  are  oppressed,  and  they  at  once  get  together 
and  raise  the  roof.  European  oppression  is  usually  either 
a  matter  of  politics,  of  language  or  of  dress.  Consequently, 
when  the  Germans  in  Nebraska  aren't  allowed  to  study  Ger- 
man in  American  schools,  they  revert  to  their  European 
ideas  and  claim  that  they  are  being  oppressed  by  the  United 
States.  The  chances  are  excellent  that  if  our  immigration 
laws  ever  become  lax  again,  and  additional  millions  of 
Central  and  Southeastern  Europeans  pour  in  on  us,  as  they 
inevitably  will  under  lax  laws,  and  find  themselves  required 
by  law  to  study  English,  the  old  cry  of  "Oppression !"  would 
be  raised  and  common  cause  would  be  made  against  the 
oppressors.  Such  a  state  of  affairs  can  become  highly  em- 
barrassing if  the  United  States  should  happen  to  be  in 
close  contact  with  European  politics  and  squabbles.  Already 
politicians  hedge  here  and  trim  there  in  order  to  get  the 
Italian  vote  or  the  Irish  vote  or  the  German  vote  or  the 
Polish  vote  in  certain  sections.  Already  freedom  of  speech 


24  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

is  curtailed  in  America  because  newspapers,  fearful  of 
advertisers,  hesitate  to  print  facts  that  may  irritate  Irish- 
American  readers  or  Jewish-American  readers  or  other 
nationals  whose  sympathies  are  more  with  Europe  than  with 
America.  Already  the  alien  and  alien-descendant  groups  in 
America  have  reached  a  point  where  they  consider  them- 
selves entitled  to  put  out  anti-American  propaganda,  but 
question  the  right  of  native-stock  Americans  to  put  out  pro- 
tective information  of  their  own. 

The  great  human  reservoirs  of  Central  and  Southeastern 
Europe  have  only  begun  to  be  tapped.  Russia,  with  her 
millions  of  peasants,  isn't  even  scratched.  Slovakia, 
Rumania,  Serbia,  the  Balkan  Peninsula — all  these  places 
and  many  more  are  crammed  with  people  who  are  anxious 
to  come  to  America.  No  American  can  shrug  his  shoulders 
and  remark  carelessly  that  eventually  immigration  will  work 
itself  out  It  will  never  work  itself  out  until  economic  con- 
ditions in  America  have  skidded  down  to  a  point  where 
they  offer  no  inducements  to  the  poorest,  the  most  ignorant 
inhabitant  of  the  most  backward  country  in  Europe.  When 
that  time  comes,  the  immigration  impulse  will  die.  Mean- 
while it  will  continue  to  flourish ;  and  the  past  records  show 
that  those  who  come  will  always  be  lower  and  lower  in  the 
economic  as  well  as  in  the  social  scale. 

The  Czechs  are  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  three  million 
German-Austrians ;  and  for  centuries  the  German- Austrians 
have  been  struggling  to  assimilate  the  Czechs.  They  were 
nearly  successful  at  one  time ;  but  the  Czechs  woke  up  at  the 
last  moment  and  kicked  over  the  traces.  Though  the 
Czechs  and  the  Germans  detest  each  other  with  all  the  stops 
of  their  detesters  pulled  out  to  the  extreme  limit,  their  man- 
ner of  living  is  very  similar.  The  German  villages  and  the 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  25 

Czech  villages  look  exactly  alike.  They  are  equally  neat 
and  orderly,  and  they  all  support  the  same  brand  of  geese. 
In  passing  through  many  parts  of  Bohemia  one  must  fre- 
quently question  the  inhabitants  in  order  to  find  out  whether 
he  is  in  a  Czech  village  or  a  German  village.  The  question- 
ing is  usually  done  in  German ;  and  if  it  is  a  Czech  village, 
the  person  whom  one  interrogates  usually  pretends  not  to 
understand  German,  though  he  almost  invariably  does.  The 
Czechs  are  inclined  to  be  impatient  of  religious  and  political 
restraint.  They  are  strongly  Social-Democratic;  and  social 
democracy  gives  off  a  distinctly  sour,  bolshevistic  odor.  It 
is  notorious  that  many  of  the  Czech  immigrants  are  greatly 
addicted  to  joining  Freethinkers'  societies  in  America  and  to 
allying  themselves  openly  with  extreme  Socialists  and  an- 
archists. None  the  less,  the  Czechs  are  among  the  best  of  the 
immigrants  who  come  to  America.  For  the  most  part  they 
have  been  far  in  advance  of  the  other  Slavic  immigrants, 
both  industrially  and  intellectually.  Of  late  years  a  great 
percentage  of  them  have  been  skilled  workmen;  and  over 
ninety-five  per  cent,  of  them  are  able  to  read  and  write. 

Now  all  of  the  Slav  races  have  certain  peculiarities 
which  are  apt  to  make  them  dangerous  members  of  large 
industrial  communities.  They  are  easily  influenced;  they 
will  not  acknowledge  one  another's  equality ;  and  they  seize 
ever}'  opportunity  to  crush  ruthlessly  the  people  over  whom 
they  have  a  temporary  advantage.  The  Russian,  though  he 
is  a  Slav,  oppressed  his  brother  Pole,  who  is  a  Slav  too. 
The  Poles  turned  around  and  did  the  same  thing  to  the 
Ruthenians,  who  are  also  Slavs.  The  Poles  and  the  Czechs, 
Slavs  all,  consider  themselves  infinitely  superior  to  each 
other.  The  Czechs  rate  themselves  far  above  the  Slovaks, 
while  the  Slovaks  scorn  the  Rusins  with  unbridled  vigor, 


26  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

though  the  Rusins  are  Slavs  too.  The  Czechs  and  the  Jugo- 
slavs are  doing  to  the  Austrians  and  the  Hungarians  the 
same  thing  that  caused  them  to  protest  so  violently  against 
Austrian  and  Hungarian  rule.  These  traits  make  them  easy 
plucking  for  the  labor  agitator.  When  somebody  tells  them 
that  they  have  been  frightfully  oppressed  by  being  forced  to 
accept  wages  of  forty-two  dollars  a  week,  that  the  owners  of 
the  steel  mills  are  vile  creatures,  and  that  the  mills  really 
belong  to  the  workmen  instead  of  the  owners,  they  believe  it, 
emit  a  hoarse  Slavic  cheer  of  approval  and  hunt  around  for 
bricks  to  bounce  against  the  heads  of  the  oppressive  mill 
owners.  If  they  are  assured  in  a  loud  voice  that  somebody 
is  trying  to  rob  them  of  their  deserts,  whether  the  deserts  be 
a  piece  of  land,  a  piece  of  pie  or  peace  of  mind,  they  believe 
it  implicitly,  and  riot  and  shed  blood  over  it.  Life  for  the 
Slav  races  for  centuries  has  been  just  one  riot  after  another. 
They  have  been  brought  up  to  break  the  laws  of  the  people 
who  govern  them,  and  to  fight  them  in  open  and  in  under- 
handed ways. 

The  Russian  has  always  been  rioting  against  the  autoc- 
racy of  the  Czar  and  the  cruelty  of  the  police.  Just  now  the 
average  Russian  is  looking  for  a  good  chance  to  riot  against 
the  stupid  and  insane  autocracy  of  the  Bolsheviki,  while  the 
Bolsheviki  are  rioting  against  the  irksome  tenets  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  Poles  have  usually  been  in  a  state  of  revolt 
against  Russian  taskmasters;  the  Ruthenians  have  been 
wracking  their  brains  for  methods  of  circumventing  their 
Polish  oppressors;  the  Czechs  used  every  underhanded 
means  in  their  power  to  undermine  the  Austrian  Empire ;  the 
Slovaks  kicked  at  the  shins  of  their  Magyar  rulers  for  cen- 
turies; the  Serbs  and  the  Bulgars  and  the  other  Balkan 
Slavs  picked  away  at  the  governing  Turk  for  hundreds  of 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  27 

years.  It  is  the  lot  of  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  Slav  races  to 
be  oppressed  or  to  think  they  are  oppressed ;  and  their  natural 
state  is  one  of  indifference  or  hostility  to  law. 

This  attitude  is  slightly  exaggerated  in  the  Slavic  immi- 
grants to  America  by  the  almost  universal  feeling  among 
them  that  they  are  breaking  our  laws  to  get  in.  They  know 
about  the  contract  labor  law ;  and  since  most  of  them  have 
the  promise  of  jobs  from  relatives  or  friends  in  America 
before  they  start,  they  have  a  vague  feeling  that  they  might 
class  as  contract  labor,  and  that  if  America  knew  the  full 
truth  about  them  they  wouldn't  be  allowed  to  land.  The 
feeling  is  wide-spread  among  them  that  they  can  break  laws 
in  America  and  get  away  with  it.  Over  against  these 
defects — which  are  usually  accentuated  by  the  rough  treat- 
ment, the  contempt  and  the  exploitation  with  which  the 
Slavs  are  frequently  received  on  their  arrival  in  America — 
is  the  tirelessness  of  their  labor,  the  readiness  with  which 
they  respond  to  kindness  and  the  stubbornness  with  which 
they  support  a  cause  that  they  believe  to  be  just.  America 
can  develop  the  good  points  of  the  Slavs  if  she  is  willing  to 
spend  time  and  the  money  to  do  it.  If  she  is  not  willing  to 
do  so,  and  does  not  rigidly  restrict  and  select  Slavic  immi- 
gration to  a  far  greater  degree  than  it  is  now  restricted,  our 
great  mines  and  industries  will  always  be  at  the  mercy  of 
any  energetic  agitator  who  is  getting  paid  to  fill  the  ignor- 
ant laborers  with  such  bunk  as,  "The  workers  shall  rule. 

Now  is  the  time  to  throttle  your  masters 

Stick    together    and    we    shall    tear    down    the    system. 

The  courts  can't  touch  you,  for  we  will  own  the 

courts " 

Almost  the  entire  eastern  end  of  Czecho-Slovakia  is 
inhabited  by  Slovaks;  but  in  the  extreme  eastern  tip  of  the 


28  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

country  dwell  the  very  backward  and  ignorant  Slav  people 
known  as  the  Rusins.  Along  the  bottom  edge  of  the  Slovaks 
and  Rusins  live  a  thin  fringe  of  Magyars  or  true  Hunga- 
rians. Thus  in  Czecho-Slovakia  there  are  five  distinct  nation- 
alities. Three  of  them  are  Slav  peoples  who  are  kept  apart 
by  religious  differences  and  the  natural  antagonism  that 
seems  to  spring  into  being  when  one  Slavic  people  attempts 
to  rule  another.  Two  of  them  are  the  former  dominant 
races,  German  and  Magyar,  which  made  violent  efforts  to 
assimilate  the  other  three  races  in  years  gone  by  and  made 
a  fizzle  of  it. 

In  1907,  forty-two  thousand  Slovaks  entered  the  United 
States.  In  1910,  twenty- four  thousand  came  in.  Twenty- 
five  thousand  came  in  1911,  twenty  thousand  in  1912, 
twenty-one  thousand  in  1913  and  nineteen  thousand  in  1914. 
An  American  in  Czecho-Slovakia,  who  was  keeping  very 
careful  watch  on  the  drift  of  emigration  from  that  country, 
declared  early  in  1920  that  the  demand  among  the  inhab- 
itants of  Czecho-Slovakia  to  go  to  America  was  triple,  quad- 
ruple and  even  quintuple  what  it  was  before  the  war. 
The  demand  was  so  great,  he  said,  that  if  the 
United  States  were  to  allow  the  immigrants  to  come  who 
wanted  to  come  and  who  had  enough  money  to  come,  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  would  go  from  Czecho-Slovakia 
alone. 

Of  the  people  who  were  coming  to  the  American  con- 
sulate in  Prague  from  all  parts  of  Czecho-Slovakia  early  in 
1920  in  order  to  get  permission  to  go  to  America,  seventy 
per  cent,  were  Slovaks.  Of  the  Czechs  who  were  getting 
permission  to  go  to  America,  nine  out  of  every  ten  intended 
to  remain  in  the  United  States  and  become  citizens.  Of 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  29 

the  Slovaks  who  were  getting  permission,  four  out  of  every 
five  intended  to  return  to  their  homes  when  they  had  saved 
up  the  amount  of  money  which  they  considered  necessary 
in  order  to  enable  them  to  live  comfortably. 

The  villages  in  the  hills  of  Northern,  Central  and  East- 
ern Slovakia  are  very  poor;  and  it  is  from  these  villages 
that  the  immigrants  come.  The  villages  are  dirtier  than 
those  in  the  south,  and  far  less  orderly.  In  many  of  them 
every  house  built  in  the  last  twenty  years  was  built  with 
money  which  immigrants  sent  from  America;  and  in  the 
eastern  districts  there  are  whole  Slovak  villages  which, 
before  the  war,  were  rebuilt  by  Slovaks  who  had  gone  to 
America.  From  many  of  the  villages  in  Central  and  Eastern 
Slovakia,  literally  every  able-bodied  man  is  either  in  America 
or  has  been  in  America. 

The  following  illustration  shows  why  Slovaks  leave 
home.  The  town  of  Velka  Bytca  is  in  Central  Slovakia. 
Velka  Bytca  has  a  clock  on  the  church  tower,  and  therefore 
is  a  town.  If  it  had  no  clock,  it  would  be  a  village;  for  that 
is  the  understanding  in  Slovakia.  It  has  a  population  of 
about  five  thousand.  It  is  on  the  Waag  River,  and  the 
mountains  rise  up  abruptly  from  both  sides.  Like  all  of 
the  towns  and  villages  along  the  Waag,  it  is  very  poor.  It 
has  too  many  artisans — so  many  that  they  can  not  earn  a 
living.  Consequently,  they  fall  in  debt  to  the  Jewish  land- 
lords and  shopkeepers  and  usurers.  Then  they  come  to 
America.  Men  from  Velka  Bytca  are  scattered  through 
New  York  and  New  Jersey.  There  are  many  in  Natrona, 
near  Pittsburg,  in  Chicago  and  in  Pullman,  Illinois.  Those 
in  Pullman  and  New  York  are  skilled  workers,  for  the 
most  part,  while  those  in  Natrona  are  day  laborers  in  steel 


30  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  glass  works.  When  the  men  from  Velka  Bytca  have 
saved  up  a  sufficient  amount  of  money,  they  go  back  to 
Slovakia  and  pay  their  debts,  but  they  see  no  opportunity 
to  earn  more  money,  so  back  they  come  to  America  and  get 
more  money ;  and  when  they  go  home  with  it  they  buy  some 
land  and  build  a  house.  That  exhausts  their  capital;  and 
they  return  to  America  for  the  third  time  to  earn  enough 
money  on  which  to  live.  This  was  the  program  followed  by 
thousands  of  Slovaks  before  the  war.  Nowadays  the 
Slovaks  who  return  are  complaining  more  bitterly  than  they 
ever  complained  before  of  the  high  prices  and  the  dirt  and 
the  lack  of  amusements — and  the  lack  of  freedom. 

Freedom  is  a  matter  which  is  not  rightly  understood  by 
Central  Europeans.  They  have  confounded  it  with  license, 
to  a  great  extent ;  and  those  who  immigrate  to  America  are 
greatly  in  need  of  instruction  as  to  the  true  meaning  of 
freedom  as  understood  by  Americans.  We  misinterpret 
oppression  in  the  same  way.  Never  having  known  oppres- 
sion, Americans  think  that  to  be  oppressed  a  man  must  be 
bashed  on  the  head  and  thrown  in  jail.  We  can  not  under- 
stand it  when  we  discover  that  a  European's  idea  of  oppres- 
sion is  the  inability  to  get  a  high-school  and  college  educa- 
tion in  some  particular  language,  or  to  wear  short  white 
pants  with  fringes  at  the  bottom.  In  the  same  way,  many 
Europeans  think  that  freedom  means  license  to  do  anything 
at  all — to  shoot  song-birds  within  city  limits  or  take  fruit 
from  the  nearest  fruit  tree  or  hit  an  enemy  over  the  head 
with  a  stockingful  of  iron  filings. 

The  people  who  went  to  America  from  Velka  Bytca 
and  other  Slovak  towns  and  villages  had  heard  a  great 
deal  about  the  new  and  glorious  freedom  which  the  Czechs 
and  the  Slovaks  were  enjoying,  now  that  Czecho- Slovakia  is 


.WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  31 

no  longer  under  Austrian  control.  They  were  eager  to  go 
back  to  sample  this  freedom  and  drink  it  down  in  great  gulps 
and  even  pour  it  in  their  hair.  They  talked  with  other 
Slovaks  about  it,  and  got  into  a  frenzy  of  excitement  and 
threw  up  their  jobs  and  stampeded  to  New  York  to  get  sail- 
ing accommodations.  They  came  back  to  Slovakia  with 
their  eyes  almost  popping  out  of  their  heads  in  their  eager- 
ness to  see  the  new  freedom ;  but  there  wasn't  a  bit  of  it  in 
sight.  They  saw  the  same  old  towns  and  the  same  old 
buildings  and — worst  jolt  of  all — the  same  old  officials,  in 
many  cases,  who  ran  things  under  Austro-Hungarian  rule. 
There  were  the  same  Jewish  landlords  and  merchants  and 
usurers  to  take  the  money  of  the  peasants;  and  prices, 
instead  of  staying  where  they  should  have  stayed,  were  the 
only  things  in  sight  which  had  shown  any  freedom  in  their 
movements.  They  had  ascended  miles  in  the  air. 

Beyond  the  Slovaks,  in  the  extreme  eastern  end  of 
Czecho-Slovakia,  live  the  Rusins ;  and  the  Rusins  are  farther 
below  the  Slovaks  in  intelligence  and  living  standards  than 
the  Slovaks  are  below  the  Czechs.  They  are  Slavs  and  a 
part  of  the  Czecho-Slovak  nation,  however — though  both 
the  Czechs  and  the  Slovaks  hope  to  give  the  Rusins  a  brisk 
kick  one  of  these  days  and  propel  them  blithely  on  to  some- 
body else's  back.  The  Rusins  are  the  same  people  as  the 
Ruthenians  or  Russniaks  who  live  in  Southeastern  Poland 
and  Southwestern  Russia;  but  the  lofty  slopes  of  the  Car- 
pathians separate  the  Rusins  and  the  Ruthenes  so  that  they 
can't  get  together.  In  our  immigration  statistics,  neverthe- 
less, they  are  lumped  with  each  other  as  Russniaks,  and  in 
1914  nearly  thirty-seven  thousand  Russniaks  immigrated  to 
America. 

Rusinia  is  a  mountainous  country,  and  the  ignorance 


32  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  backwardness  of  most  of  its  inhabitants  is  the  ignorance 
and  backwardness  of  the  mountaineer  .plus  most  of  the 
unpleasant  features  of  the  Slav.  They  live  in  huts  made  of 
plaster  or  of  stone,  and  with  thatched  roofs.  The  people 
live  in  one-half  of  the  hut;  and  in  the  other  half  live  the 
cows  and  the  live  stock.  As  in  many  of  the  poorer  Slav 
countries,  the  houses  have  no  chimneys  and  no  fireplaces. 
The  heating  and  cooking  are  accomplished  by  means  of  a 
raised,  home-made  stove.  Under  and  around  the  stove,  on 
a  dirt  floor,  sleep  the  inhabitants.  The  smoke  pours  out 
of  the  stove  freely,  but  has  no  means  of  getting  out  of  the 
house.  Consequently  the  people  live  in  a  haze  of  smoke. 
After  a  Rusin  has  succeeded  in  living  over  forty  years  in 
this  atmosphere,  he  is  little  else  than  an  animated  smoke- 
dried  ham.  Almost  everybody  has  some  sort  of  eye  trouble 
on  account  of  the  smoke  in  which  he  lives.  Three  genera- 
tions of  people  are  frequently  crammed  into  one  room  of 
the  average  peasant's  hut.  Put  twelve,  sixteen,  or  eighteen 
people  of  different  ages  and  sexes  into  one  small  room  and 
let  them  live  their  entire  lives  in  it,  and  none  of  them  is 
mentally,  physically  or  spiritually  elevated  to  any  marked 
degree.  Yet  those  are  the  conditions  under  which  eighty 
per  cent,  of  the  Rusins  have  been  living  ever  since  they  began 
rusing,  as  one  might  say.  Their  home  life  is  complicated 
by  the  presence  of  the  cow-stall  under  the  same  roof  and 
by  the  fact  that  the  pigs,  goats  and  chickens  wander  into  the 
living-room  at  nightfall  and  nestle  down  among  the  sleepers 
for  their  night's  rest.  The  cow  usually  stands  almost  belly- 
deep  in  mire;  and  the  odor  which  emerges  from  a  Rusin 
peasant's  home  is  so  strong  that  a  grown  man  can  almost 
chin  himself  on  it. 

The  state  of  Rusinia  was  formed  and  an  alliance  with 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME  33 

Czecho-Slovakia  effected,  not  through  the  efforts  and 
desires  of  the  Rusins  in  Rusinia,  but  through  the  repre- 
sentations which  Rusins  in  America  made  to  the  Peace 
Conference  shortly  after  President  Wilson's  unfortunate 
and  untimely  utterance  concerning  the  self-determina- 
tion of  small  nations.  Having  made  their  homeland  free, 
a  large  percentage  of  the  Rusins  in  America  are  anxious  to 
go  back  to  Rusinia  to  live.  Since  they  live  in  the  meanest 
and  most  frugal  way  in  America,  it  is  not  at  all  unusual 
for  a  Rusin  to  come  back  with  five  thousand  American  dol- 
lars in  his  pockets.  When  I  was  last  in  Czecho-Slovakia, 
five  thousand  dollars  meant  four  hundred  thousand 
Czecho-Slovak  crowns;  and  in  pre-war  times  that  amount 
of  money  would  have  meant  that  its  possessor  could  buy  a 
couple  of  towns  and  be  a  land-baron.  Most  of  the  immi- 
grants seem  to  figure  in  pre-war  prices ;  and  it  always  proves 
to  be  a  crushing  mistake.  At  the  time  of  which  I  write,  for 
example,  four  hundred  thousand  crowns  wouldn't  go  very 
far  in  Rusinia.  A  horse  which  formerly  cost  two  thousand 
crowns  had  mounted  in  price  to  twenty-five  thousand 
crowns.  A  good  two-story  farm-house  of  the  best  class 
which  once  sold  for  around  three  thousand  crowns  had 
risen  to  two  hundred  thousand  crowns.  Shoes  which  used 
to  cost  five  crowns  had  increased  to  two  hundred  fifty 
crowns.  So  the  man  who  comes  back  with  five  thousand 
American  dollars  finds  that  they  don't  go  nearly  so  far  as 
they  used  to  go  in  spite  of  the  more  advantageous  exchange 
rates. 

The  officials  in  Rusinia,  as  in  Slovakia,  are  the  same  old 
autocratic  officials  who  were  in  power  when  the  emigrants 
went  away  before  the  war.  The  officials  can't  be  replaced 
because  there  aren't  enough  educated  and  trustworthy 


34  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Rusins  with  whom  to  replace  them.  This  is  a  distinct  bore 
to  the  emigrants  who  had  expected  to  boss  things  on  their 
return.  They  can't  accustom  themselves  to  the  very  bad 
food  conditions  which  have  resulted  from  the  Russian  inva- 
sion, the  invasion  by  the  Hungarian  Bolsheviks  and  the 
Czech  occupation,  coupled  with  the  inability  of  the  Czech 
government  to  distribute  food  to  the  hungry  sections.  They 
can't  adjust  themselves  to  the  dirt  and  the  stench  and  the 
squalor.  Business  is  rotten — everything  is  rotten — and 
they  want  to  turn  right  around  and  go  back  to  America 
again.  Their  anxiety  to  go  makes  converts  of  others,  and 
the  others  influence  still  others,  and  so  on  and  so  on  and 
so  on. 

Rusin  officials  have  told  me  that  it  is  their  belief  that 
every  Rusin,  whether  or  not  he  has  ever  been  to  America, 
wishes  to  go  there. 

And  that,  sketchily,  is  why  Europe  leaves  home. 


Ports  of  Embarkation 

THERE  were  three  young  men  from  the  American  Con- 
sulate sitting  behind  a  long  counter  in  a  big  room  at  a 
Northern  European  port  of  embarkation  for  America. 
Before  them  passed  a  constant  stream  of  emigrants  from 
Poland,  from  Czecho-Slovakia,  from  Lithuania,  from 
Rumania  and  from  various  other  countries  of  Central 
Europe.  The  stream  oozed  in  at  a  double  door  at  the  end 
of  the  room,  wound  slowly  past  the  three  young  men,  and 
slowly  trickled  out  of  another  double  door  far  behind  them. 
It  had  flowed  steadily  through  the  room  from  nine  o'clock 
in  the  morning  until  noon,  when  it  had  been  temporarily 
dammed  to  allow  the  three  young  men  to  get  something  to 
eat,  and  from  early  afternoon  until  two  hours  after  night- 
fall. That,  incidentally,  is  the  picture  that  any  one  must 
always  carry  away  with  him  from  European  ports  of  em- 
barkation when  immigration  to  America  is  not  rigorously 
restricted: — streams  of  humanity  oozing  slowly  but  cease- 
lessly out  of  Central  Europe  to  America ;  streams  of  under- 
sized, peculiar,  alien  people  moving  perpetually  through 
consulates  and  steamship  offices  and  delousing  plants  on 
their  way  from  the  slums  of  Europe  to  the  slums  of  America : 
streams  trickling  through  Havre  and  Boulogne  and  Cher- 
bourg, streams  flowing  through  Antwerp  and  Rotterdam 
and  Danzig,  streams  gnawing  at  the  temporary  barriers 

35 


36  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

which  keep  them  from  Bremen  and  Hamburg  and  Stettin; 
streams  which  swell  to  torrents  just  before  the  ocean  liners 
sail  and  dwindle  again  to  orderly  and  steady  currents  when 
the  liners  have  departed,  but  which  flow  without  cessation 
under  all  conditions.  As  long  as  ordinary  American  immi- 
gration laws  are  in  force,  and  as  long  as  they  are  interpreted 
in  the  futile  and  impotent  manner  in  which  they  were  inter- 
preted up  to  the  middle  of  1921,  these  streams  will  continue 
to  flow  from  all  the  ports  of  Europe.  Unless  America  has 
immigration  laws  which  rigidly  restrict  immigration,  they 
will  flow  to-night  and  to-morrow;  next  week  and  next 
month ;  on  Sundays  and  holidays.  They  will  flow  into  every 
ship  that  leaves  Europe  until  every  ship  is  filled ;  and  if  the 
number  of  ships  is  doubled  or  trebled,  the  streams  will  flow 
with  just  enough  added  velocity  to  fill  them  all. 

These  three  young  men  from  the  American  Consulate, 
then,  were  "sitting  on  the  line"  in  one  of  Europe's  ports 
of  embarkation.  They  were  watching  for  fake  passports 
or  false  American  vises  or  counterfeit  American  ten-dollar 
consular  fee  stamps.  That  was  their  sole  duty.  All  of  the 
emigrants  passing  before  them  had  come  from  other  coun- 
tries, and  had  no  occasion  to  present  themselves  before 
American  consular  officers  at  the  ports  of  embarkation.  But 
the  traffic  in  forged  passports  had  become  so  great  early  in 
1921  that  our  consulates  were  forced  to  take  men  from  their 
already  over-heavy  duties  and  set  them  to  watching  at  the 
very  gangplanks  of  the  ships.  It  was  not  until  early  in  1921 
that  passports  began  to  be  examined  at  the  ships  for  frauds, 
but  fraudulent  passports  had  been  in  use  for  months.  There 
is  no  way  of  knowing  how  many  thousands  of  persons 
entered  the  United  States  during  1920  with  forged  papers. 

In  front  of  the  three  young  men  there  was  a  little  pile 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  37 

of  Polish  passports  bearing  forged  American  vises,  forged 
signatures  of  J.  K.  Huddle,  American  Vice-Consul  in  War- 
saw in  charge  of  American  vises,  and  counterfeit  American 
ten-dollar  consular  fee  stamps.  Some  of  the  counterfeits 
were  crude;  some  were  practically  perfect.  The  hands  of 
the  clock  on  the  wall  pointed  to  twenty  minutes  before  six. 
The  young  man  beside  whom  I  was  sitting  had  been  scru- 
tinizing vises  for  nearly  eight  hours.  For  nearly  eight  hours 
the  stream  of  emigrants  had  crept  past  him  slowly,  steadily, 
endlessly.  He  was  plainly  very  tired  and  very  nervous  and 
very  much  on  edge  from  the  stench  of  the  emigrants,  and 
from  their  ceaseless  efforts  to  better  their  positions  in  the 
line  by  little  tricks  and  meannesses,  and  from  their  eternal 
and  obvious  falsehoods  when  questioned.  In  the  space  of 
ten  minutes,  as  I  sat  there,  he  took  three  passports  from 
three  mean-faced,  shifty-eyed  Jews  who  were  traveling  on 
Polish  papers.  He  threw  them  with  the  other  fraudulent 
passports,  motioned  their  bearers  to  come  behind  the 
counter  for  examination,  and  then  swung  around  on  his 
stool  and  faced  me. 

There  were  tears  in  his  eyes — a  fact  which  was  no 
doubt  due  to  the  eight  hours  of  exacting  and  unpleasant  and 
wearying  labor  in  which  he  had  been  engaged;  and  in 
repeating  his  words  I  would  like  to  say  again  that  the  work 
had  made  him  very  nervous  and  very  much  on  edge. 

"I  want  to  tell  you  something,"  he  said.  "My  father 
wanted  me  to  get  my  education  out  of  a  college.  A  college 
is  a  good  thing,  of  course;  but  it  never  appealed  to  me  very 
much.  I  had  an  idea  that  if  I  took  a  pack-horse  and  a  few 
books  and  got  out  into  the  country,  I  could  soak  up  as  much 
education  as  I  could  get  out  of  a  college.  It  seemed  to  bo 
all  the  same  to  my  father;  so  when  I  had  finished  prep 


38  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

school  he  gave  me  my  college  money  and  I  went  out  to 
Colorado  and  got  a  saddle  horse  and  a  pack-horse.  I  wan- 
dered all  through  that  country,  mountains  and  deserts  and 
canons.  It's  a  wonderful  country,  like  all  the  rest  of  our 
country.  I  loved  it  then  and  I  love  it  now " 

He  hesitated  and  looked  around  at  the  human  stream 
which  moved  steadily  on  its  serpentine  course  before  us. 

"When  I  think,"  he  went  on,  "that  these  people,  who 
don't  know  the  meaning  of  the  word  'patriotism'  and  who 
have  been  brought  up  to  hate  every  form  of  government,  are 
going  to  America  to  have  a  voice  in  the  future  of  that 
country,  it  makes  me  see  red!" 

One  of  the  other  young  men  pushed  back  his  stool  and 
looked  around  at  me. 

"That  goes  for  me,  too,"  he  said.  "After  you've  seen 
these  mobs  pouring  over  to  America  for  a  few  weeks,  you 
get  so  fighting  mad  that  you  can't  talk  about  it." 

The  third  young  man  looked  up  from  a  scrutiny  of  a 
doubtful  consular  fee  stamp.  "What  do  they  say  about  it  at 
home?"  he  asked.  "What  are  they  letting  this  go  on  for? 
They  can't  know  what's  going  on,  or  they'd  stop  it  in  a 
second.  What's  the  matter  with  them,  anyway?  Are  they 
crazy?" 

"Yes,  what  do  they  say  about  it  at  home?"  asked  the 
first  young  man. 

"A  lot  of  people  at  home,"  I  told  him,  "say  that  the 
reports  from  Europe  concerning  the  undesirability  of  emi- 
grants to  America  and  the  large  number  that  wish  to  go  to 
America  are  greatly  exaggerated." 

Now  I  very  much  wish  that  those  people  in  America 
who  prattle  so  cheerfully  about  the  desirability  of  European 
emigrants  and  about  the  exaggeration  which  characterizes 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  39 

the  reports  of  the  large  numbers  that  wish  to  emigrate 
could  have  seen  the  looks  of  disgust  and  contempt  that 
marred  the  features  of  the  three  young  men  at  these  glad 
tidings.  Two  of  them  could  only  express  themselves  by 
swearing  violently.  The  third — the  young  man  who  had 
picked  up  his  education  among  the  mountains  and  deserts 
and  canons  of  Colorado — glared  intently  at  a  Polish  pass- 
port on  the  counter  in  front  of  him  and  growled  hoarsely, 
"The  people  who  say  such  things  either  don't  know  any- 
thing about  the  conditions  that  exist  in  every  port  of  Europe, 
or  they're  rotten  Americans." 

That  statement  may  seem  a  trifle  harsh;  but  it  is  the 
condensed  opinion  of  every  American  consular  official, 
every  American  diplomatic  representative  and  every  Ameri- 
can official  and  relief  worker  and  business  man  who  had  an 
opportunity  of  observing  conditions  in  Europe  during  1920, 
and  whose  racial  and  business  affiliations  do  not  make  it 
necessary  for  him  to  hold  contrary  opinions. 

The  American  president  of  a  large  steamship  line  is 
reported  to  have  said  that  the  agitation  against  immigration 
in  America  was  due  to  greatly  exaggerated  stories  from 
Europe.  If  he  was  correctly  quoted,  his  statement  could 
only  have  been  inspired  by  the  fear  that  if  America  restricts 
immigration  with  a  permanent  and  rigid  law,  as  it  must 
unless  its  stock  of  wisdom  and  common  sense  is  completely 
exhausted,  the  steerages  of  his  ships  will  not  be  filled  and 
the  earnings  of  his  steamship  company  will  consequently  be 
decreased.  His  statement  was  not  founded  on  fact,  nor 
was  it  based  on  the  reports  of  any  competent  American  con- 
sular representative  in  Europe.  If  it  was  not  inspired  by 
the  fear  of  losing  money,  it  could  only  be  the  result  of  inside 
information  furnished  by  a  ouija  board  or  by  a  Kickapoo 


40  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Indian  herbologist  and  soothsayer.  In  return  for  a  certain 
amount  of  deft  manipulation,  these  same  authorities  would 
unquestionably  assure  him  that  the  reported  distance  from 
the  earth  to  the  sun  is  also  greatly  exaggerated,  that  the 
porcupine  can  throw  his  quills  a  distance  of  thirty  paces 
without  loss  of  accuracy,  and  that  a  boxing  bout  is  being 
arranged  between  Georges  Carpentier  and  the  King  of 
Greece.  Whenever  any  person  minimizes  the  evil  results 
which  unrestricted  or  semi-restricted  emigration  from 
Europe  will  have  on  America,  a  scrutiny  of  that  person's 
position  or  antecedents  will  invariably  reveal  a  very  con- 
spicuous Ethiopian,  so  to  speak,  imperfectly  concealed  in  a 
very  diaphanous  wood-pile. 

The  discrepancy  between  the  opinions  held  by  the  offi- 
cials of  large  steamship  lines  and  those  held  by  competent 
employees  of  the  same  lines  is  usually  very  great — as  great, 
in  fact,  as  the  discrepancy  between  the  opinions  of  prohibi- 
tionists and  of  brewers.  In  Rotterdam  for  example,  I 
interviewed  a  director  of  one  of  the  largest  steamship  lines 
engaged  in  carrying  emigrants  to  America.  The  steamship 
line  has  an  excellent  organization  through  Europe,  and  its 
agents  feed  emigrants  down  to  the  steamships  with  military 
precision.  This  director  was  a  large  complacent  man  with 
three  chins,  and  the  mere  thought  that  America  contem- 
plated any  stopping  of  the  immigrants  who  proved  so  remu- 
nerative to  his  company  was  highly  repugnant  to  him. 
Indeed,  the  very  thought  was  what  our  leading  literary 
journals  like  to  refer  to  as  unthinkable — until  it  was  forced 
on  him. 

"You  people  in  America  mustn't  worry  about  immigra- 
tion," he  said,  smiling  fatly.  "The  present  abnormal  move- 
ment is  a  purely  temporary  movement.  In  five  or  six  or 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  41 

seven  years  it  will  probably  sink  again  to  the  pre-war 
figures,  so  why  should  you  disturb  yourselves?" 

The  emigrants  who  pass  through  Rotterdam  are  eighty 
per  cent.  Hebrew.  The  figures  of  the  United  States  Bureau 
of  Immigration  show  that  over  one  hundred  fifty-three  thou- 
sand Jews  entered  the  United  States  in  1906,  over  one 
hundred  one  thousand  in  1913,  and  over  one  hundred  thirty- 
eight  thousand  in  1914.  State  department  reports  show 
that  the  bulk  of  these  people  have  been  unassimilatable,  non- 
productive, and  economically  and  socially  undesirable.  Like 
many  other  steamship  officials,  this  official  was  assuming 
that  because  America,  with  a  pitiful  lack  of  wisdom  and 
foresight,  was  permitting  more  than  a  million  immigrants 
a  year  to  litter  her  shores  before  the  war,  she  should  con- 
tinue to  do  so  indefinitely,  even  though  the  entire  million 
proved  economically  and  socially  undesirable. 

"With  the  numbers  that  are  going  now,"  continued  the 
director,  softly  stroking  his  gleaming  triple  chin,  "our 
steamship  line  will  be  kept  busy  for  years  to  come,  so  that 
any  new  legislation  wouldn't  affect  us.  Most  of  them,  you 
see,  have  relatives  in  America,  and  you  can't  keep  out  rela- 
tives." 

"Why  not,"  I  asked  him,  "when  a  large  percentage  of 
the  relatives  are  cousins  and  uncles  and  aunts  and  brothers- 
in-law?  Why  should  America  be  obliged  to  take  them,  if 
they  are  undesirables?" 

"Oh,"  he  replied,  "you've  got  to  take  them  if  they  are 
relatives." 

"How  do  you  feel,"  I  asked  him,  "about  the  emigrants 
who  are  stuck  in  Holland  without  any  funds  and  are  obliged 
to  stay  here  ?" 

"That  is  very  bad,"  he  replied.    "We  can  not  afford  to 


42  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

have  them  in  Holland,  for  there  is  no  work  for  them.  There 
is  not  a  sufficient  amount  of  work  for  our  own  people.  Be- 
sides, they  are  all  middle-men — all  parasites  on  the  com- 
munity. They  are  very  bad  for  us,  and  we  can  not  have 
them.  We  shall  have  to  find  some  method  of  getting  rid  of 
them." 

"If  you  feel  that  way  about  it,"  I  said,  "how  can  you 
think  it  so  strange  that  America  doesn't  want  them?  We're 
in  the  same  position  that  you  are." 

"That's  different,"  he  said.  "America  is  a  big  country. 
You've  got  Texas  and  Oklahoma  and  all  those  places  where 
there  aren't  many  people.  Let  them  go  there." 

"They  don't  want  to  go  there,"  I  told  him.  "They 
want  to  go  to  New  York  and  Brooklyn  and  Chicago  and 
other  large  cities." 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Well,"  said  he,  "you've 
got  to  take  them  because  no  other  country  will  take  them." 
And  that,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  closed  the  argu- 
ment. 

On  the  following  day  I  went  down  to  the  dock  from 
which  a  big  liner  was  sailing  from  Rotterdam  for  New 
York  with  eighteen  hundred  emigrants  aboard.  About 
fifteen  hundred  out  of  the  eighteen  hundred  were  Jews.  I 
selected  a  spot  from  which  I  could  watch  the  stream  of 
emigrants  moving  slowly  past  the  final  examiners,  and 
found  myself  beside  a  husky  six-footer  in  the  uniform  of  a 
ship's  surgeon.  His  features  were  of  the  type  which  are 
generally  known  as  Celtic ;  but  whether  he  was  an  English- 
man or  an  American  there  was  no  way  of  telling  until  I  had 
spoken  to  him.  All  that  I  knew  about  him  was  the  fact  that 
he  was  employed  by  the  same  steamship  line  that  employed 
the  director  whom  I  had  interviewed  on  the  preceding  day. 


Copyright    Cincinnati   Enquirer 

A  Jew  of  Warsaw  bartering  for  some  plums  and  watching  the  scales. 


The  best  type  of  Jewish  emigrants  from  Poland.    They  are  holding  their 
United  States  vises 


•*.v  ' 

Peasant  houses  in  Poland. 


A  street  scene  in  old  \Yarsaw. 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  43 

"What  do  you  think  about  this  crowd  that's  going  over 
to  America  ?"  I  asked  him. 

"What  do  I  think  about  them?"  he  repeated.  "I'll  tell 
you  what  I  think.  I  think  it's  criminal  for  any  country  to 
allow  such  a  mass  of  people  to  be  poured  into  it.  You  can 
call  it  what  you  like,  but  I  call  it  a  crime!  Nothing  but  a 
crime ! 

"Over  in  America  we're  getting  so  that  the  country  is 
packed  with  Italian-Americans  and  Jewish-Americans  and 
Czech- Americans  and  Irish- Americans ;  and  still  we  let  this 
mob  go  rushing  in  to  add  to  the  crowd  that  is  six  of  one 
thing  and  half-a-dozen  of  another  thing.  You  might  call  me 
Irish  because  my  people  came  from  there  long  ago;  but  I 
don't  call  myself  anything  but  American,  and  I  have  no 
sympathy  for  any  people  that  go  maudlin  over  the  countries 
that  they  deserted  years  ago.  I  say  it's  a  crime  not  to  stop 
these  people  from  coming  to  America ;  and  that's  what  every 
other  decent  American  says  after  he  has  seen  what  they  are 
and  how  they  act  and  what  they  believe  in.  I  was  reading 
in  a  Paris  paper  the  other  day  that  a  United  States  Senator 
said  that  emigration  conditions  over  here  had  been  exagger- 
ated. All  I  wish  is  that  I  could  bring  that  bird  over  here 
and  give  him  a  good  look  at  conditions.  If  he  didn't  change 
his  mind,  there'd  be  something  wrong  with  it — ossification 
or  something." 

This  expression  of  opinion,  which  might  reasonably  be 
termed  a  mouth-full,  is  highly  interesting  when  contrasted 
with  the  opinion  of  the  higher  and  more  sheltered  officials 
of  the  same  steamship  line. 

Witnesses  have  recently  stated  before  the  Senate  Immi- 
gration Committee  that  "reports  of  a  million  Jews  seeking 
to  come  to  America  were  a  wild  flight  of  fancy,"  and  that 


44  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

they  did  not  believe  there  were  more  than  half  a  million 
Jews  who  wished  to  emigrate. 

I  wish  to  take  issue  loudly  and  firmly  with  these  wit- 
nesses. I  have  talked  with  emigration  officials  of  various 
countries,  interviewed  the  heads  of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant 
Aid  Society  in  different  localities,  talked  to  steamship  offi- 
cials and  employees,  sat  on  the  lines  at  passport  and  vise 
offices  at  every  emigration  center,  gone  through  delousing 
plants  and  vaccination  stations — incidentally  picking  up  a 
choice  assortment  of  lice  myself, — visited  a  number  of  emi- 
grant hotels  and  barracks  and  concentration  camps,  inter- 
viewed large  numbers  of  American  public  health  officials, 
consular  officers  and  diplomats,  talked  with  hundreds  of 
emigrants  at  the  ports  of  embarkation,  and  finally  worked 
back  into  the  towns  and  villages  which  form  the  source  of 
all  our  immigration.  It  is  only  in  these  small  towns — towns 
whose  populations  are  frequently  from  eighty  to  ninety-five 
per  cent.  Hebrew — that  one  gets  the  proper  idea  of  the  over- 
whelming masses  whose  sole  desire  seems  to  be  to  locate 
near  or  distant  relatives  in  America  and  borrow  from  them 
enough  money  to  get  there  themselves.  An  American  visi- 
tor to  these  towns  is  literally  mobbed  by  the  Jews  who  wish 
assistance  in  getting  in  touch  with  their  relatives  in  America. 

The  head  of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  in 
Paris,  Mr.  Chapira,  stated  to  me  that  he  expected  "not  more 
than  two  hundred  thousand  Hebrews"  to  pass  through  the 
Paris  office  of  the  Society  on  their  way  to  America  during 
1921.  The  bulk  of  those  who  pass  through  Paris  are  from 
Bessarabia  and  Rumania.  Doctor  Schluger,  head  of  the 
Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  in  Warsaw,  informed  me 
that  a  thousand  Jews  passed  through  his  office  every  day, 
one-third  being  in  search  of  information  about  getting  to 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  45 

America,  one-third  waiting  for  replies  to  cables  which  the 
society  had  sent  to  their  relatives  in  America,  and  one-third 
getting  their  tickets  to  America.  The  Jews  that  pass 
through  the  Warsaw  office  are  mostly  from  Poland.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  Jews  from  Poland,  Bessarabia  and  Rumania, 
there  are  the  throngs  that  are  pouring  into  Poland  daily 
from  Soviet  Russia,  and  the  masses  who  are  anxious  to 
escape  from  the  army-ridden  Ukraine  and  who  have  already 
escaped  and  are  working  their  way  overland  up  toward 
Warsaw.  Of  these  people,  practically  every  one  wishes  to 
go  to  America. 

The  report  to  the  effect  that  a  million  Jews  are  seeking  to 
come  to  the  United  States,  instead  of  being  a  wild  flight  of 
fancy,  as  witnesses  have  stated  to  the  Senate  Immigration 
Committee,  is  extremely  conservative.*  There  is  a  great 
difference  between  the  numbers  of  immigrants  that  will  be 
able  to  reach  America  each  year  and  the  numbers  that  wish 
to  go.  All  of  the  Jews  that  are  going  are  paupers  and  can 
not  go  unless  they  are  helped  from  America.  Then,  too, 
there  aren't  nearly  enough  ships  to  provide  accommodations 
for  those  who  wish  to  go.  Yet  in  spite  of  these  handicaps, 
more  than  fifty  thousand  Hebrew  immigrants  arrived  at 
Ellis  Island  during  the  month  of  October,  1920 — or  at  the 
rate  of  six  hundred  thousand  a  year. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  all  nationalities  and  races  can  not 
be  lumped  together  in  any  discussion  of  immigration.  This 
can  not  be  done,  however;  for  some  immigrants  have  qual- 


*Information  received  from  Danzig  dated  November  10,  1921,  five 
months  after  the  Three  Per  Cent.  Restrictive  Immigration  Law  took 
effect,  stated :  "Every  Jew  in  Eastern  Europe  seems  to  want  to  go  to 
America,  and  it  seems  to  be  only  a  question  of  time  before  they  will 
be  successful.  Many  go  to  Canada,  but  all  of  them  have  relatives  in 
the  States  and  eventually  reach  the  States."  It  is  practically  impossible 
to  stop  this  pauper,  parasitic  Jewish  immigration  by  means  of  a  per- 
centage law. 


46  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ities  which  others  lack;  and  there  are  certain  racial  traits 
which  make  desirable  or  undesirable  immigrants  of  the 
races  which  possess  them.  It  is  unfortunate  that  all  people 
who  emigrate  from  Poland  can  not  be  spoken  of  as  Poles. 
It  is  impossible,  though ;  for  the  bulk  of  the  emigrants  from 
Poland  not  only  refuse  to  classify  themselves  as  Poles,  but 
even  deny  indignantly  that  they  are  Poles.  They  state,  on 
being  questioned,  that  they  are  Jews,  and  this  reply  appears 
on  passports  in  the  space  provided  for  the  nationality  of  the 
bearers  of  the  passports.  The  same  is  true  of  Jewish  emi- 
grants from  Russia  and  Bessarabia  and  the  Ukraine  and 
Rumania  and  Hungary. 

Every  Jew  who  is  emigrating  to  America  from  any 
country  in  Europe  has  no  love  for  any  nation  or  for  any 
government — and  this  statement  will  be  willingly  and  com- 
prehensively confirmed  by  every  American  government  offi- 
cial in  Europe. 

Of  all  the  emigrants  who  pass  through  Paris,  Havre, 
Cherbourg,  Boulogne,  Antwerp,  Rotterdam,  Danzig,  War- 
saw and  other  large  emigration  centers  in  the  north  of 
Europe,  between  sixty  and  ninety  per  cent,  are  Jews  and  so 
classify  themselves  when  asked  their  nationality.  Yet  there 
are  many  advocates  of  unrestricted  immigration  who  protest 
bitterly  against  any  mention  of  this  fact.  For  example, 
Congressmen  Siegel  and  Sabath  submitted  a  minority  report 
on  a  House  Bill  providing  for  a  temporary  suspension  of 
immigration;  and  in  this  report  they  said:  "The  majority 
report  is  especially  unfortunate  in  its  references  to  the 
number  of  Jewish  immigrants  arriving  in  this  country. 
Classif  ication  according  to  the  religion  or  race  of  immigrants 
is  without  justification.  It  is  opposed  to  that  Americanism 
that  prevailed  in  the  past. . . .,. ."  Congressmen  Siegel  and 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  47 

Sabath  need  only  to  turn  to  the  records  of  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Immigration  to  learn  that  Hebrews  entering  the 
United  States  have  always  been  classified  as  Hebrews, 
because  the  Hebrews  themselves  have  never  permitted  the 
United  States  immigration  authorities  to  classify  them  in 
any  other  way. 

There  are  many  facts  connected  with  the  matter  of  immi- 
gration that  are  difficult  to  face.  One  of  the  most  difficult 
is  the  matter  of  race.  It  is  the  constant  cry  of  sentimen- 
talists and  individuals  whose  interest  in  immigration  arises 
from  non-patriotic  reasons  that  America  consists  of  layer 
upon  layer  of  immigrants,  and  that  to  stop  immigration  is 
to  stop  the  growth  and  impair  the  greatness  of  America. 
Such  people  refuse  to  realize  or  to  recognize  that  practically 
all  immigration  to  America  prior  to  1880  was  composed  of 
people  of  the  Nordic  race — the  tall,  blond,  adventurous 
people  from  the  northern  countries  of  Europe :  from  Sweden 
and  Norway  and  Denmark  and  England  and  Scotland; 
from  certain  sections  of  Germany  and  Belgium  and  Ireland 
and  France  and  Holland.  The  Nordic  people  possess  cer- 
tain characteristics :  they  have  long  skulls  and  blond  hair — 
hair,  that  is,  which  is  lighter  than  black;  they  possess  to  a 
marked  degree  the  ability  to  govern  themselves  and  to  gov- 
ern others;  and  from  their  ranks  have  been  recruited 
the  world's  voluntary  explorers,  pioneers,  soldiers,  sailors 
and  adventurers.  The  early  colonists  of  every  undeveloped 
country  in  modern  times  have  invariably  been  Nordics. 
America,  then,  was  a  nation  of  Nordics. 

Since  1880  the  bulk  of  immigration  to  the  United  States 
has  been  composed  of  people  from  the  other  two  main 
races  of  Europe,  known  to  biologists  and  ethnolo- 
gists as  the  Alpine  race  and  the  Mediterranean  race.  The 


48  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Alpines  are  the  stocky,  slow,  dark,  round-skulled  folk  who 
inhabit  most  of  Central  Europe  and  whose  chief  representa- 
tives are  the  large  part — not  all,  but  the  large  part — of  the 
different  Slav  countries,  the  Czechs,  the  Poles,  the  Slovaks, 
the  Russians,  the  Ruthenians  and  so  on.  The  Mediterra- 
neans are  the  small,  swarthy,  black-haired,  long-skulled  peo- 
ple which  form  the  bulk  of  the  population  in  Southern  Italy, 
Greece,  Spain  and  the  north  coast  of  Africa.  These  two 
races,  plus  the  Hebrew,  which  is  an  Oriental  instead  of  a 
European  race,  were  pouring  into  America  at  the  rate  of  a 
million  a  year  during  the  ten  years  before  the  war;  and 
given  sufficient  ships  and  an  absence  of  immigration 
restrictions,  they  will  pour  into  America  at  the  rate  of  two 
million  a  year  and  more  for  years  to  come.  These  people 
who  have  been  pouring  in  since  1880 — and  only  since  1880 
— have  displayed  one  marked  characteristic  throughout  the 
centuries.  Never  have  they  been  successful  at  governing 
themselves  or  at  governing  any  one  else.  They  have  rushed 
to  the  spot  where  a  stronger  and  hardier  people  have  estab- 
lished successful  enterprises;  and  by  their  low  standards  of 
living  and  their  willingness  to  subordinate  everything  to 
immediate  gain,  they  have  forced  out  the  people  who  pre- 
ceded them.  One  of  the  oldest  stories  in  history  is  the 
repeated  influx  of  Alpine  and  Mediterranean  peoples  into 
Nordic  people,  and  the  resultant  and  almost  invariable 
breeding  out  of  the  Nordics  by  the  Alpines  and  Mediter- 
raneans.* To  these  people,  who  for  centuries  have  demon- 
strated their  incapacity  to  govern  themselves,  America  is 


*Every  American  who  has  at  heart  the  future  of  America  and  of 
the  race  that  made  it  a  great  nation  owes  it  to  himself  and  to  his 
children  to  get  and  read  carefully  The  Passing  of  the  Great  Race,  by 
Madison  Grant ;  The  Rising  Tide  of  Color,  by  Lothrop  Stoddard ;  and 
Race  or  Mongrel,  by  Alfred  P.  Schultz. 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  49 

blindly  and  fatuously  offering  the  keys  of  her  cities  and  her 
reins  of  government,  and  that  is  why  Americans  all  over 
Europe,  after  watching  and  studying  the  type  of  immigrant 
that  is  rushing  to  America,  are  writing  and  cabling  to  their 
people  in  America  and  to  the  Department  of  State  that  immi- 
gration is  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  the  American  people; 
death  if  it  continues  unrestricted,  and  life  if  it  is  stopped. 
There  will  be  many  to  smile  at  this  statement  as  being  an 
exaggeration.  It  is  no  exaggeration,  but  a  matter  of  cold 
fact ;  and  it  will  be  upheld  by  every  American  who  has  seen 
European  emigration  at  its  sources — with  the  exception  of 
those  whose  racial  or  business  affiliations  have  impaired 
their  eyesight. 

It  should  be  distinctly  understood,  however,  that  the 
attitude  of  the  Americans  in  Europe  who  protest  so  vigor- 
ously against  the  continuation  of  the  present  immigration  is 
not  inspired  by  antagonism  to  any  particular  race,  but  by 
the  desire  to  keep  out  of  America  all  people  who  are 
economically  and  politically  unfit.  There  is  no  fear  or 
thought  in  their  minds,  for  example,  of  a  Zionist  movement 
to  control  and  subjugate  the  world — a  matter  which  I  have 
investigated  in  almost  every  country  in  Europe,  only  to  be 
convinced  that  it  is  the  rankest  poppycock*  There  is,  how- 
ever, the  knowledge  that  the  people  who  are  coming  to 
America  are,  from  the  nature  of  their  training  and  their 
environment,  unassimilatable,  undesirable,  and  incapable  of 
grasping  American  ideals.  This  is  particularly  true  of  the 
present-day  Jewish  immigrant,  and  it  is  even  admitted  to 


*This  chapter  was  written  six  months  before  the  Constantinople  cor- 
respondent of  The  London  Timts  exposed  the  fact  that  "The  Protocols 
of  the  Elders  of  Zion"  was  plagiarized  from  Maurice  Joly's  Dialogue 
Aux  Enfers,  which  was  originally  written  to  show  that  Napoleon 
planned  to  dominate  the  world. 


50 

be  true  by  many  prominent  Jewish-Americans  engaged  in 
relief  work  in  Europe;  but  it  is  seldom  that  they  will  admit 
it  publicly.* 

The  emigrants  who  are  passing  through  the  ports  of 
Northern  Europe  to-day  on  their  way  to  America  have 
certain  things  in  common.  Practically  all  of  them  are 
paupers.  This  is  universally  true  of  the  Jewish  emigrants, 
none  of  whom  has  a  cent  to  his  name  that  hasn't  been  loaned 
or  given  to  him  by  some  person  or  organization  in  America. 
Every  one  of  them  is  going  for  economic  reasons  or  to 
escape  military  service.  I  have  questioned  these  people  by 
the  hundreds ;  and  while  practically  every  one  claims  to  be 
going  to  join  a  near  or  a  distant  relative,  and  while  all  of 
them  speak  glibly  of  the  oppression  which  people  of  their 
race  have  suffered,  I  have  never  found  one  who  had  himself 


*"There  exists  to-day  a  wide-spread  and  fatuous  belief  in  the  power 
of  environment,  as  well  as  of  education  and  opportunity,  to  alter 
heredity,  which  arises  from  the  dogma  of  the  brotherhood  of  man, 
derived  in  its  turn  from  the  loose  thinkers  of  the  French  Revolution 
and  their  American  mimics.  Such  beliefs  have  done  much  damage  in 
the  past  and  if  allowed  to  go  uncontradicted  may  do  even  more  serious 
damage  in  the  future.  Thus  the  view  that  the  Negro  slave  was  an  un- 
fortunate cousin  of  the  white  man,  deeply  tanned  by  the  tropic  sun  and 
denied  the  blessings  of  Christianity  and  civilization,  played  no  small 
part  with  the  sentimentalists  of  the  Civil  War  period ;  and  it  has  taken 
us  fifty  years  to  learn  that  speaking  English,  wearing  good  clothes 
and  going  to  school  and  to  church  do  not  transform  a  Negro  into  a 
white  man.  Nor  was  a  Syrian  or  Egyptian  freedman  transformed  into 
a  Roman  by  wearing  a  toga  and  applauding  his  favorite  gladiator  in 
the  amphitheatre.  Americans  will  have  a  similar  experience  with  the 
Polish  Jew,  whose  dwarf  stature,  peculiar  mentality  and  ruthless  con- 
centration on  self-interest  are  being  engrafted  upon  the  stock  of  the 

nation The  man  of  the  old  stock  is  being  crowded  out  of  many 

country  districts  by  these  foreigners,  just  as  he  is  to-day  being  literally 
driven  off  the  streets  of  New  York  City  by  the  swarms  of  Polish 
Jews.  These  immigrants  adopt  the  language  of  the  native  American, 
they  wear  his  clothes,  they  steal  his  name  and  they  are  beginning  to 
take  his  women,  but  they  seldom  adopt  his  religion  or  understand  his 
ideals ;  and  while  he  is  being  elbowed  out  of  his  own  home,  the  Ameri- 
can looks  calmly  abroad  and  urges  on  others  the  suicidal  ethics  which 
are  exterminating  his  own  race." 

— The  Passing  of  the  Great  Race,  by  Madison  Grant 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  51 

suffered  the  indignities  which  he  described  so  freely,  or 
whose  journey  to  America  was  a  purely  sentimental  one  for 
the  purpose  of  joining  relatives.  It  is  understood  among 
the  emigrants  that  if  they  can  not  produce  letters  and  even 
affidavits  establishing  the  fact  that  they  have  relatives  in 
America,  the  United  States  will  refuse  to  allow  them  to  go. 
Consequently  they  harp  constantly  on  their  relatives.  But 
the  real  reason  which  drives  them  to  America  is,  as  they 
themselves  phrase  it,  "rotten  business"  in  the  countries  from 
which  they  come.  Business  is  rotten  all  over  Europe,  and 
millions  are  out  of  work — just  as  they  are  in  the  United 
States.  It  is  rotten  in  Poland  because  the  country  is  over- 
loaded with  Jews  who  were  driven  into  Poland  by  the 
Czar's  government  many  years  ago,  and  because  the  sole 
occupation  of  the  mass  of  Jews  is  that  of  middleman — a 
maker  of  small  business — or  unskilled  artisans,  such  as 
cheap  tailors  or  carpenters. 

The  report  of  Captain  P.  Wright,  of  the  British  Mission 
to  Poland,  as  published  in  an  official  document  of  the  Brit- 
ish government,  states  that  "poor  Jews  are  all  dealers,  as 
their  ancestors  have  been  for  centuries;  and  for  their  par- 
ticular kind  of  dealing,  capitalists  as  they  are  with  a  capital 
of  a  few  shillings,  there  is  every  year  less  and  less  room. 
The  Jew  in  the  country  who  lives  by  lending  a  few  roubles 
to  a  peasant  and  taking  a  chicken  as  interest,  or  who  buys 
a  load  of  vegetables  and  resells  them,  or  is  a  pedler;  the 
Jew  in  the  town  who  is  a  hawker,  a  tout,  or  in  some  small 
middleman's  business — these  have  greater  and  greater  diffi- 
culty in  making  a  living.  There  must  be  millions  of  such 
in  Poland.  The  cooperative  society  and  store  and  the  bank 
drive  them  more  and  more  out  of  business  in  the  country, 
and  more  modern  methods  of  distribution  in  the  town ;  and 


52  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

this  is  likely,  now  the  economic  development  of  Poland  is  no 
longer  to  be  artificially  restricted,  to  go  on  faster  and  faster. 

they  are  sweated  in  semi-unskilled  trades  when  they 

emigrate.     They  are  hardly  ever  producers;  on  this  point 
every  one  is  agreed.     Poor  Jews  can  not  go  into  factories, 
partly  because  of  their  Sabbatarian  principles,  partly  because 
Polish  workmen  will  not  work  with  people  whose  personal 
habits  are  so  unclean. ......  They  are  driven  into  all  sorts 

of  illicit  or  fraudulent  practises,  and  I  think  the  Poles  are 
right  when  they  complain  that  too  large  a  proportion  of 
convictions  for  such  offenses  are  Jewish.  They  are  unfit 
for  the  modern  economic  world,  not  in  consequence  of  any 
fault  of  their  own,  but  in  consequence  of  a  long  historical 
past " 

Mr.  Paul  Warburg,  former  Vice-Governor  of  the  Fed- 
eral Reserve  Board,  was  recently  quoted  in  a  New  York 
paper  as  declaring  in  respect  of  immigration  that  "the 
strongest  and  best  man  material  of  Europe  comes  here,  for  it 
takes  a  strong  heart  and  an  ambitious  character  to  tear  itself 
up  by  the  roots,  leave  home,  family  and  friends,  and  travel, 
usually  'mid  all  the  unpleasantness  of  third  class,  to  the 
uncertainty  of  a  new  life  in  a  new  land." 

This  is  one  of  the  old  sentimental  views  of  immigration, 
and  it  is  emphatically  not  true  to-day.  The  emigrants  who 
are  passing  through  the  Northern  European  ports  of  em- 
barkation are,  as  far  as  the  great  majority  of  them  are  con- 
cerned, the  weakest  and  poorest  man  material  of  Europe. 
They  are  the  defeated,  incompetent  and  unsuccessful — the 
very  lowest  layer  of  European  society.  They  are  paupers  by 
circumstance,  and  parasites  by  training  and  inclination. 
They  are  expedited  out  of  their  countries  by  governments 
who  do  not  want  them,  they  are  assisted  to  America  by  the 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  53 

largest  and  best-organized  society  that  ever  assisted  and 
unconsciously  stimulated  immigration  to  America  or  to  any 
other  country,  and  they  invariably  travel  on  money  they 
have  begged  or  demanded  from  America.  Nor  do  these 
people  consider  that  they  are  going  to  the  "uncertainty  of  a 
new  life  in  a  new  land."  They  are  going  from  countries 
where  business  is  rotten,  taxes  are  high,  food  is  scarce, 
money  is  hard  to  get,  military  service  is  apt  to  seize  the 
men-folk,  and  armies  are  likely  at  any  time  to  start  march- 
ing and  simultaneously  begin  seizing  all  the  cattle  and  poul- 
try and  other  edibles  in  sight.  They  are  going  to  America, 
the  world's  greatest  sure  thing:  America,  where  all  the 
money  in  the  world  comes  from ;  America,  who  has  so  much 
money  that  she  sends  her  sons  all  over  the  world  to  give  it 
away  to  people  who  often  don't  need  it;  America,  where 
conditions  at  their  worst  are  better  than  conditions  in  other 
countries  at  their  best.  These  are  the  universal  opinions  of 
the  emigrants.  Suggest  to  them  that  they  are  going  to  the 
"uncertainty  of  a  new  life  in  a  new  land,"  and  they  will 
wonder  privately  whether  you  are  weak-minded.  The  land 
to  which  they  are  going  is  no  uncertainty;  it's  a  leadpipe 
cinch.  The  only  Europeans  who  are  taking  a  long  chance 
to-day  are  the  ones  that  stay  at  home. 

It  is  probable  that  the  menace  which  unrestricted  immi- 
gration presents  to  the  American  people,  American  customs 
and  American  ideals  can  never  be  comprehended  by  persons 
who  have  not  seen  the  masses  of  peculiar  and  alien  peoples 
pouring  out  of  Europe  to  America  in  unending  streams. 
Many  influences  and  many  traditions — traditions,  for 
example,  like  those  that  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal,  and 
that  America  is  obliged  to  shelter  all  persons  who  consider 
themselves  persecuted  or  oppressed  regardless  of  her  own 


54  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

well-being1 — make  it  impossible  to  present  the  facts  about 
immigration  without  causing  sentimentalists,  near-Ameri- 
cans and  other  sincere  but  misinformed  persons  to  emit 
deafening  roars  about  exaggeration,  race-hatred,  inhuman- 
ity, brutality,  un-Christianity  and  retardation  of  the  national 
growth.  The  great  cry  of  American  consuls  and  observers 
in  Europe  is:  "The  people  at  home  can  never  understand 
what  immigration  means  unless  they  can  see  it  as  we  see 
it.  They  won't  believe  us  when  we  send  word  home  about 
it.'*  The  ancient  Romans  couldn't  understand  it  either; 
and  they  imported  nondescript  slaves  of  various  races  from 
the  southern  and  eastern  coasts  of  the  Mediterranean  to  work 
their  huge  estates.  From  these  slaves  are  descended  the 
south  Italians  of  to-day — people  almost  as  different  from 
the  north  Italians  of  Nordic  descent  as  an  alligator  pear  is 
different  from  an  alligator — people  incapable  of  self-gov- 
ernment and  totally  devoid  of  initiative  or  creative  ability. 
Unrestricted  immigration  made  a  mongrel  race  out  of  the 
south  Italians.  Unrestricted  immigration  made  a  mongrel 
race  out  of  the  Greeks.  Unrestricted  immigration  will 
inevitably  and  absolutely  do  the  same  thing  to  Americans. 

An  American  consul  in  one  of  the  most  important  emi- 
gration centers  in  the  north  of  Europe  made  the  following 
statement  to  me  in  January,  1921 : 

"Nine-tenths  of  all  the  emigrants  which  pass  through 
here  on  their  way  to  America  are  from  Poland;  and  nine- 
tenths  of  those  from  Poland  are  Hebrews.  They  have  no 
political  principles  or  convictions,  are  entirely  without 
patriotism,  and  usually  are  evasive,  dishonest  and  incapable 
of  appreciating  any  responsibility  toward  any  government. 
Of  the  young  men  who  are  going,  a  large  proportion  are 
running  away  from  military  service.  The  emigration  is 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  55 

almost  entirely  assisted  emigration,  due  to  the  ability  of  the 
Hebrews  to  invoke  and  use  the  assistance  of  relatives  or  of 
the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  to  enable  them  to  obtain 
passage  on  steamers.  The  voluntary  or  unassisted  emi- 
grant is  unable  to  compete  with  them  for  accommodations. 
The  United  States,  at  the  present  time  and  under  the  present 
regulations,  is  getting  only  people  fit  for  the  sweat  shop  or 
for  the  lowest  types  of  labor.  Thousands  of  them  only 
escape  becoming  public  charges  because  they  graft  on  their 
relatives,  and  not  because  they  have  any  ability  whatever." 

This  statement  is  not  only  true  of  one  particular  port 
of  embarkation,  but  of  every  port  of  embarkation  in  the 
north  of  Europe — of  Cherbourg,  Havre  and  Boulogne,  of 
Antwerp,  Rotterdam  and  Danzig;  and  when  the  German 
ports  are  thrown  open  to  emigrants,  it  will  be  true  of  them  as 
well. 

Paris  is  not  strictly  a  port  of  embarkation ;  but  through 
Paris  flow  the  emigrant  streams  which  spread  out  to  the 
French  ports  of  Havre,  Boulogne  and  Cherbourg.  There 
are  little  clusters  of  emigrants  from  every  part  of  Eastern 
Europe  scattered  through  cheap  lodging-houses  in  various 
sections  of  Paris;  but  the  largest  numbers  may  always  be 
found  concentrated  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Hebrew  Im- 
migrant Aid  Society  on  Rue  Lamarck.  From  its  initials  this 
society  is  known  to  all  the  emigrants,  as  well  as  to  every  one 
else  who  comes  in  touch  with  it,  as  "Hias" ;  and  it  is  to  Hias 
that  they  rush  with  all  their  troubles.  Hias  feeds  them; 
Hias  lodges  them ;  Hias  cables  to  America  for  them,  locates 
relatives  whose  addresses  have  been  lost  or  changed  or 
never  known,  and  gets  money  for  them  to  make  the  trip  to 
America.  Hias  intercedes  with  the  American  consulate 
for  emigrants  to  whom  the  consulate  has  been  obliged  to 


56  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

refuse  vises;  Hias  provides  doctors  to  attend  to  the  sick; 
Hias  in  general  acts  as  a  parent  for  the  otherwise  helpless 
emigrants. 

Any  information  concerning  any  agency  which  assists 
emigrants  to  go  to  America  is  flashed  broadcast  through 
the  countries  from  which  the  emigrants  come  by  their  seem- 
ingly strange  methods  of  underground  communication. 
Consequently  Hebrew  emigration  is  being  stimulated  by  this 
organization  to  an  extent  never  before  known.  Letters  come 
back  from  America  to  Polish  and  Rumanian  and  Hungarian 
towns,  telling  of  the  miracles  which  Hias  has  accomplished 
in  locating  relatives.  This  news  spreads  through  the  towns, 
and  to  adjoining  towns,  whereupon  hundreds  of  Jews  sell 
all  that  they  have  for  hardly  enough  money  to  get  them  to 
the  nearest  Hias  offices ;  and  when  they  have  arrived  there, 
they  proceed  to  locate  their  relatives  in  America  and  call 
for  money.  In  a  later  chapter  I  will  give  a  more  detailed 
account  of  the  working  of  a  Hias  office.  The  Hias  organ- 
ization is  a  remarkable  and  an  excellent  one ;  and  the  good 
which  it  does  is  enormous.  None  the  less,  it  is  the  greatest 
organized  stimulator  of  undesirable  immigration  to  America 
that  has  ever  existed.  The  fact  that  this  stimulation  is 
unconscious  does  not  make  it  any  less  dangerous. 

Fifteen  hundred  Jews  came  daily  to  Hias  headquarters  in 
Paris  during  the  winter  of  1920-1921  to  get  assistance  of 
some  sort  in  connection  with  their  journey  to  America. 
Most  of  them  were  from  the  extreme  east  of  Europe — from 
Rumania  and  Bessarabia.  From  fifteen  to  twenty  per  cent. 
of  them  came  from  Poland,  Czecho-Slovakia  and  the 
Ukraine. 

There  are  two  fairly  large  courtyards  around  which  the 
Hias  buildings  are  grouped;  and  at  all  hours  pf  the  day  these 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  57 

courtyards  were  filled  to  overflowing  with  the  wretchedly 
clothed,  undernourished  men,  women  and  children  who  were 
waiting  for  money  from  America  or  boats  to  America  or 
information  as  to  how  to  get  to  America,  Wherever  a  board 
was  loose  in  the  underpinning  of  a  house  fronting  on  these 
courtyards,  or  wherever  there  was  any  sort  of  aperture,  the 
emigrants  had  crammed  the  opening  with  the  filthy,  vermin- 
filled  clothes  which  they  wore  when  they  arrived  in  Paris 
and  which  they  discarded  as  soon  as  they  could  buy,  beg  or 
borrow  other  garments.  The  emigrants  led  me  to  these  rag 
deposits  in  order  to  impress  upon  me  the  condition  that 
most  of  them  are  in  when  they  reach  Paris.  I  asked  them 
whether  the  vermin  didn't  crawl  out  of  the  old  clothes  and 
settle  in  the  new.  They  scratched  themselves  pensively  and 
admitted  that  they  did ;  but  apparently  it  never  occurred  to 
them  to  burn  their  old  clothes. 

One  needs  only  to  set  foot  in  any  place  where  there  is  a 
concentration  of  emigrants  in  order  to  be  almost  over- 
whelmed by  a  rush  of  men,  women  and  children  eager  to 
give  information  or  seek  information.  This  is  particularly 
true  of  Jewish  concentration  centers,  where  one  is  so 
crowded  and  jostled  by  the  mob  that  the  manipulation  of  a 
camera  or  even  of  a  note-book  is  literally  impossible  if  the 
people  are  not  forcibly  and  repeatedly  repulsed.  The  con- 
suls, the  medical  examiners  and  the  steamship  people  all  over 
Europe  complain  that  the  Jews  are  most  difficult  to  handle 
because  of  their  ruthless  concentration  on  self-interest,  and 
their  determination  to  better  themselves  at  some  one's  or 
every  one's  expense  in  even  the  most  trivial  matters.  Doctor 
Schluger,  head  of  the  Hias  organization  at  Warsaw,  com- 
mented to  me  on  the  "I-want-to-get-in-first"  spirit  displayed 
by  the  thousands  of  Jews  who  were  storming  the  Hias  office 


58  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

in  Warsaw  each  week.  All  sorts  of  officials  have  repeatedly 
called  my  attention  to  the  manner  in  which  Poles  and 
Rumanians  and  Slovaks  and  Hungarians  stolidly  take  their 
places  in  line  for  examination,  while  in  the  same  lines  the 
Jews,  men  and  women  both,  fight  and  kick  and  scream  and 
riot  for  the  privilege  of  precedence.  Every  Jew  seems  to 
want  to  get  there  first,  even  though  he  may  not  have  the 
slightest  idea  where  he's  going.  Consequently  it  was  very 
easy  to  locate  emigrants  to  interview  at  a  Hias  office. 

From  another  standpoint,  however,  these  people  are 
very  difficult  to  interview.  This  is  because  they  are  con- 
firmed and  incurable  exaggerators.  Doctor  Boris  Bogen, 
head  of  the  Joint  Distribution  Committee  in  Paris, — which, 
like  the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society,  is  a  most  efficient 
and  praiseworthy  Jewish-American  relief  organization — 
assured  me  that  he  found  it  almost  impossible  to  believe  any 
Jewish  emigrant  because  of  his  apparent  determination  to 
exaggerate.  "When  he  speaks  of  one  thousand  machine 
guns,"  said  Doctor  Bogen,  "he  usually  means  one  machine 
gun." 

The  penchant  for  exaggeration  works  in  two  ways. 
The  truth  is  greatly  embellished  or  greatly  diminished,  as 
the  occasion  demands.  When  Hias  officials  wish  to  calm 
the  rising  antagonism  in  America  against  undesirable  immi- 
gration, they  blandly  underestimate  the  numbers  that  wish 
to  emigrate.  When  a  Jewish  emigrant  wishes  to  curry 
sympathy,  he  exaggerates  a  hundredfold  his  virtues  or  his 
sufferings  or  the  number  of  his  relatives  or  whatever  he  may 
consider  this  strongest  selling  point. 

For  example,  when  I  was  going  through  the  delousing 
plant  in  Danzig  with  Captain  J.  H.  Linson,  of  the  United 
States  Public  Health  Service,  we  ran  across  a  girl  whose 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  59 

hair,  though  particularly  beautiful,  was  full  of  nits.  "Ask 
her,"  I  told  the  interpreter,  "how  often  she  washed  her  hair 
when  she  was  at  home."  Without  the  slightest  hesitation  the 
young  woman  replied  that  she  washed  it  six  times  a  week. 
Thinking  that  she  hadn't  understood  the  question,  I  told  the 
interpreter  to  repeat  it.  She  nodded  her  head  and  said  that 
she  had  understood  the  first  time,  and  that  she  always 
washed  her  hair  six  times  a  week.  The  other  women  who 
crowded  around  us  obviously  realized  that  the  young  woman 
had  made  her  story  a  little  too  strong.  The  next  woman  I 
asked — a  venerable  lady  who  was  also  carrying  a  large 
assortment  of  nits — replied  that  her  hair  had  always  been 
washed  three  times  a  week.  Eight  other  women,  all  with 
nits,  owned  up  to  washing  their  hair  only  twice  a  week.  All 
of  them  came  from  small  Polish  towns  where  washing  facili- 
ties are  in  about  the  same  condition  that  they  were  in  when 
Adam,  as  the  cruder  army  persons  used  to  say,  was  a  lance- 
jack.  If  they  washed  their  hair  once  every  ten  years  they 
were  unusually  cleanly. 

During  one  of  my  visits  to  Hias  headquarters  in  Paris, 
a  man  whom  I  was  questioning  asked  my  interpreter  why 
I  was  questioning  him.  The  interpreter,  who  was  a  French 
Jew,  replied  that  I  wished  to  help  him  get  to  America.  Since 
I  was  able  to  understand  him,  and  since  I  had  no  desire  to 
arouse  false  hopes  in  any  one's  breast,  I  told  the  interpreter 
to  tell  him  the  truth,  and  asked  him  why  he  had  lied.  He 
spread  out  his  hands  in  hurt  amazement.  "What  difference 
does  it  make  what  you  tell  them?"  he  asked.  "Tell  them 
anything  if  it  will  help  you  get  what  you  want.  If  I  told 
them  that  you  wanted  to  write  about  them,  they  wouldn't 
tell  you  nothing  but  pretty  sentiments." 

There  are  several  ways  of  getting  at  the  truth  when 


60  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

questioning  these  emigrants ;  and  an  absolutely  sure  way  of 
not  getting  it  is  to  question  them  individually  in  such  a  way 
that  they  can  not  be  overheard  by  any  of  their  own  people. 
If  they  are  led  to  argue  among  themselves  over  points  at 
issue,  and  if  no  official  of  any  organization  or  government 
is  present,  the  truth  usually  slips  out  in  the  heat  of  argument. 

In  the  many  talks  which  I  had  with  emigrants  at  Hias 
headquarters  in  Paris,  I  was  particularly  struck  by  the  keen 
interest  which  the  men  of  military  age  exhibited  in  the 
question  of  whether  or  not  they  would  be  taken  for  soldiers 
when  they  reached  America.  Several  sought  private  inter- 
views with  me  in  order  to  settle  their  doubts  on  this  matter. 
It  was  obvious  that  they  were  about  as  anxious  to  serve  in 
an  army  as  they  were  to  lose  a  couple  of  legs.  Some  of 
them  claimed  to  have  escaped  military  service  in  their 
respective  countries  by  bribery,  while  others  had  simply  run 
away  from  it. 

Abram  Barbald,  of  Doraban  in  Rumania,  explained  to 
me  that  the  Rumanian  government  was  wholly  bad.  His 
sole  reason  for  pronouncing  it  so  evil  was  its  custom  of 
taking  everybody  for  military  service, — unless  he  guaran- 
teed that  he  was  going  to  America.  All  the  Rumanian  Jews 
at  this  Hias  office  assured  me  that  this  was  true;  they  could 
only  escape  the  army  by  going  to  America.  Barbald  had 
cousins  in  New  York, — pronounced  Neffyork,  by  the  way, 
by  almost  everybody  whom  one  encounters  at  the  Hias 
offices.  They  had  written  him  that  one  makes  money  in 
America,  no  matter  at  what  he  works.  That  was  why  he 
was  going. 

One  young  man  followed  me  from  place  to  place  with 
such  diligence  that  whenever  I  wanted  to  make  a  note  in 
my  note-book,  I  first  had  to  push  him  forcibly  from  my 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  61 

elbow.  He  seemed  always  on  the  verge  of  speaking,  but 
he  never  spoke.  I  finally  told  the  interpreter  either  to  find 
out  what  he  wanted  or  to  keep  him  away  from  me.  He 
then  announced  that  some  of  his  friends  had  told  him  that 
he  would  be  taken  in  the  army  when  he  reached  America, 
and  demanded  piteously  to  be  told  whether  it  was  so.  I 
assured  him  that  it  was  not.  His  face  brightened  tremen- 
dously, and  he  shook  his  fist  at  two  other  young  men.  "The 
robbers!"  he  cried.  "They  try  always  to  frighten  me." 
Later  this  same  young  man  came  back  to  me  and  assured 
me  that  he  was  very  unhappy  that  America  wouldn't  make 
him  fight.  He  wanted  to  fight,  he  declared.  I  asked  him 
why  he  wanted  to  fight,  and  why  he  would  be  willing  to 
fight  for  America  when  he  wouldn't  fight  for  Poland.  He 
replied  that  he  would  be  glad  to  fight  any  one  that  America 
wanted  him  to  fight,  and  that  his  reason  for  being  anxious 
to  fight  was  to  show  his  relatives  in  America  that  he  wasn't 
afraid  of  anything.  "Well,"  I  said,  "would  that  be  the  only 
thing  that  you  were  fighting  for?"  "No,"  said  the  young 
man,  "for  money  also."  The  crowd  which  surrounded  us 
failed  to  see  the  humor  in  the  young  man's  remarks. 

Among  the  thousands  of  emigrants  who  were  pouring 
over  early  in  1921,  it  was  common  knowledge  that  great 
numbers  of  people  were  out  of  work  in  America.  They 
didn't  care,  however.  They  all  said  that  they  could  find 
something  to  do — buy  something  and  sell  it  again  at  a  profit. 

Mendel  Sticklario,  from  Bucharest,  was  going  to  Phila- 
delphia, where  his  cousin  worked  in  a  factory.  What  did 
he  care  that  many  in  America  had  no  work?  His  cousin 
had  promised  to  fire  somebody  from  the  factory  and  give 
the  job  to  him.  He  should  worry,  as  the  saying  went. 

Abram   Berkovitch,    from    Rahan   in   Bessarabia,    was 


62  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

going  to  Neffyork.  At  home  he  was  a  butcher,  but  what  he 
could  do  in  Neffyork  he  didn't  know.  One  could  always 
push  a  cart  around  and  sell  things  from  it.  Yes,  he  had 
heard  that  there  were  two  million  out  of  work  in  America, 
and  he  was  willing  to  be  the  two-million-and-first.  The 
interpreter  explained  to  me  privately  that  the  butcher  was 
a  good  feller.  Anything  went  with  him,  and  he  didn't  care 
what  he  did.  He  had  some  cousins  in  America.  Let  the 
cousins  do  the  fretting,  not  ? 

Miron  Raynish  from  Transylvania,  Yanko  Schwartz 
from  Jassy,  Yakob  Korsoi  from  Odessa,  Rubin  Klug  from 
Budapest,  and  Mottel  Polyak  from  Bessarabia,  all  knew 
that  many  were  out  of  work  in  America ;  but  they  expected 
their  relatives  to  get  work  for  them — or  loan  them  enough 
money  to  start  in  business  for  themselves.  This  was  the 
universal  thought  of  hundreds  that  I  talked  to.  There  were 
many  who  talked  a  great  deal  about  the  terrible  treatment 
which  they  had  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Poles  and  the 
Rumanians  and  the  Bolsheviks.  Beards  had  been  cut  off, 
they  declared ;  throats  had  been  cut ;  they  had  been  thrown 
from  moving  trains;  they  had  been  robbed  and  beaten.  I 
questioned  these  people  carefully.  The  things  of  which  they 
spoke  had  not  happened  to  them,  but  to  people  of  whom 
they  had  heard.  I  spent  three  days  at  the  Hias  headquar- 
ters, and  never  a  man  came  forward  who  had  had  these 
things  happen  to  him. 

The  nearest  thing  to  it  was  a  small  elderly  Jew  with  an 
enormous  hooked  nose,  little  curls  that  hung  down  in  front 
of  his  ears  and  merged  with  his  beard,  and  a  greasy  gabar- 
dine. Shaking  and  white-faced  with  excitement,  he  told  me 
a  harrowing  tale.  He  had  been  riding  in  a  compartment,  he 
said,  with  six  Polish  soldiers  returning  from  the  war.  They 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  63 

were  terrible  creatures,  he  said.  They  told  of  Jews  they  had 
killed  and  of  Jews  they  were  going  to  kill— of  beards  they 
were  going  to  cut  off.  They  were  bloodthirsty?  Oi  yoi! 
Horrible!  "But,"  I  asked  him,  "did  they  do  anything  to 
you?"  The  little  man  shook  his  head.  "Why  not?"  I 
asked.  The  little  man  threw  back  his  head  and  squinted  at 
me  knowingly  along  his  hooked  nose.  "Because,"  he  said 
simply,  "they  didn't  know  I  was  a  Jew!"  Nobody  could 
possibly  have  mistaken  him  for  anything  else.  The  soldiers 
had  been  frightening  him. 

All  of  those  who  passed  through  Hias  headquarters 
were  going  to  America  because  business  was  rotten — not 
because  they  were  oppressed. 

I  am  reluctant  to  say  it,  but  these  people  have  the 
obsession  of  oppression,  just  as  several  of  the  Balkan  and 
Slav  nations  suffer  from  an  obsession  of  former  grandeur. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  they  have  never  been  oppressed, 
because  they  have  been;  but  I  do  mean  to  say  that  their 
motive  in  going  to  America  is  not  to  escape  oppression: 
it  is  to  get  a  better  job.  The  Jews  in  Poland  and  Hungary 
and  Rumania  who  have  fairly  descent  jobs — and  there  are 
many  who  have — have  little  intention  of  going  to  America. 

Europe  has  its  slang,  as  well  as  America;  and  for  the 
three  years  after  the  war  there  was  one  slang  phrase  that  had 
great  vogue  in  all  Hebrew  centers.  When  young  Jews 
meet  on  the  street  in  Warsaw,  in  Bialistock,  in  Vilna,  in 
Budapest,  in  Vienna,  in  Bucharest,  they  clasp  hands  and 
say  to  each  other:  "Wvr  fahren  nach  America!" — We're 
going  to  America !  They  may  have  no  money,  no  prospects, 
no  immediate  intention  of  going  to  America;  but  the  sug- 
gestion of  going  is  ever-present ;  and  any  emigration  author- 
ity knows  that  suggestion  plays  a  very  large  part  in  the 


'64  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

tremendous  mass-movements  to  America  from  Europe. 
"Wir  fahren  nach  America!"  is  more  popular  in  Europe  than 
the  phrases,  "Believe  me,  kid!"  or  "I  gotcha,  Steve!"  ever 
were  in  America. 

In  Paris  I  had  an  interesting  conversation  with  Mr. 
Jacques  Chapira,  head  of  the  Paris  office  of  the  Hebrew 
Immigrant  Aid  Society.  Mr.  Chapira  declared  that  America 
could  take  in  fifty  million  more  immigrants  and  never  notice 
them.  Such  states  as  Nebraska,  Texas,  Utah  and  other 
southern,  middle  and  western  states,  he  declared,  were  prac- 
tically unpopulated  and  could  easily  absorb  all  the  Jews  in 
the  world.  "America,"  he  declared,  "must  keep  her  doors 
open  for  the  sake  of  humanity.  The  Statue  of  Liberty 
signifies  that  America  offers  protection  to  those  who  suffer 
in  other  lands,  and  where  is  there  any  people  that  have  suf- 
fered as  much  as  the  Jews?  Some  people  talk  about  the 
sufferings  of  the  Armenians;  but  compared  with  our  suf- 
ferings, the  Armenians  haven't  suffered  at  all.  And  I'd 
like  to  see  any  body  of  Armenians  that  could  be  American- 
ized as  well  or  as  quickly  as  an  equal  body  of  Jews.  The 
great  trouble  in  America  is  that  our  people  live  in  the  slums ; 
and  that  is  a  very  easy  thing  to  change.  All  that  America 
needs  to  do  is  to  spend  a  little  money  to  get  the  Hebrews 
out  on  to  the  farms.  It  doesn't  do  a  bit  of  good  to  spend  a 
lot  of  money  trying  to  Americanize  them.  That  money  is 
thrown  away.  If  the  country  would  spend  a  quarter  of 
the  money  to  get  them  to  farms,  the  results  would  be  much 
better." 

At  this  point  I  interrupted  Mr.  Chapira.  "I'm  going  to 
ask  you  to  forget  for  a  moment  that  you  are  an  official  of 
a  Hebrew  Aid  Society,"  I  told  him,  "and  to  remember  only 
that  we  are  two  American  citizens  talking  together.  Our 


PORTS  OF  EMBARKATION  65 

country,  as  you  must  know,  has  become  the  home  of  a 
larger  number  of  unassimilatecl  racial  groups  than  ever 
existed  even  in  old  Austria-Hungary.  The  recent  Hebrew 
immigrants,  being  entirely  non-producers,  present  one  of  our 
most  indigestible  problems.  If  you  know  anything  about 
our  immigration  troubles,  you  know  that  repeated  efforts 
have  been  made  to  establish  Hebrew  farming  communities, 
and  you  know  that  in  almost  every  instance  these  communi- 
ties have  been  complete  and  absolute  failures.  The  United 
States  Immigration  Commission  found  long  ago  that  there 
seemed  to  be  something  about  the  Jewish  temperament  that 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  be  a  successful  farmer.  They 
want  to  live  in  cities,  and  they  insist  on  living  in  cities. 
You've  seen  the  types  that  are  rushing  to  our  cities  by  the 
thousands  and  the  hundreds  of  thousands.  America  can 
neither  take  care  of  them  nor  assimilate  them.  As  one 
American  citizen  to  another,  now,  haven't  we  the  right  to 
protect  ourselves  against  this  influx?  Isn't  it  criminal  not 
to  protect  ourselves  against  it  ?" 

Mr.  Chapira  hesitated  for  a  moment,  and  then  he 
answered  my  question  in  an  indirect  but  none  the  less  satis- 
factory manner.  People  have  an  unpleasant  habit  of  deny- 
ing interviews ;  and  it  is  barely  possible  that  some  friend  of 
Mr.  Chapira  might  take  it  into  his  head  to  deny  that  I  had 
quoted  Mr.  Chapira  correctly.  I  wish  to  forestall  any  such 
denial  by  stating  that  I  am  transcribing  Mr.  Chapira's 
answer  direct  from  my  note-book,  without  embellishment 
and  without  recourse  to  memory. 

"If  America  would  look  to  her  own  interests,"  said  he, 
"why  doesn't  she  make  it  possible  for  the  Jews  to  transfer 
their  emigration  to  Palestine?  This  should  be  done  by 
diplomatic  procedure.  The  Jews  are  a  miserable  nation, 


66  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  we  should  do  something  to  change  the  situation.  France 
doesn't  want  them;  England  doesn't  want  them;  no  coun- 
try wants  them.  If  they  started  going  to  Palestine  they 
wouldn't  go  anywhere  else.  In  six  months  or  a  year  you 
will  see  a  great  change,  for  they  will  start  going  to  Pales- 
tine in  greater  numbers.  Palestine  is  capable  of  supplying 
places  for  all  the  Jews  if  the  economic  situation  there  is 
improved."* 

The  significant  feature  of  Mr.  Chapira's  statement  is 
the  admission  that  if  America  wishes  to  consider  what  is 
best  for  America's  interests,  she  must  see  that  the  Jews 
go  elsewhere.  This  is,  of  course,  not  only  true  of  Jews 
but  also  of  all  immigrants  who  come  to  America  to  sink 
down  in  the  slums  and  the  foreign  quarters. 

*The  gates  of  Palestine  are  barred  to  the  type  of  Jew  that  has  been 
allowed  to  pour  into  America  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands.  Palestine 
admits  only  the  following  classes  of  Jews:  (i)  Persons  of  independ- 
ent means  who  intend  to  take  up  permanent  residence  in  Palestine;  (2) 
members  of  professions  who  intend  to  follow  their  calling;  (3)  wives 
and  children  and  other  persons  wholly  dependent  on  residents  in  Pales- 
tine; (4)  persons  who  have  a  definite  prospect  of  employment  with 
specified  employer  or  enterprise;  (5)  persons  of  religious  occupation, 
including  the  class  of  Jews  who  have  come  to  Palestine  in  recent  years 
from  religious  motives,  and  who  can  show  that  they  have  means  of 
maintenance  there;  (6)  travelers  who  do  not  propose  to  remain  in 
Palestine  longer  than  three  months;  (7)  returned  residents. 


The  Existence  of  an  Emergency 

Testimony  taken  by  the  Senate  Immigration  Committee  in  hearings 
on  the  Johnson  bill  prohibiting  immigration  for  one  year  has  failed 
to  prove  the  existence  of  an  emergency,  according  to  Senators  who 
analyzed  evidence  submitted  by  more  than  thirty  witnesses.  One 
member  said  that  the  bill  would  be  side-tracked  until  the  emergency 
could  be  proved. 

— Cable  despatch  to  The  Paris  Herald,  January  14,  1921. 

EMERGENCIES  are  frequently  determined  by  the  point  of 
view.  A  small  American  city  which  wakes  up  one  morning 
to  find  itself  with  two  hundred  cases  of  scarlet  fever  and 
fifty  cases  of  diphtheria  on  its  hands  is  very  apt — in  view 
of  the  emergency — to  throw  a  series  of  epileptic  fits,  froth 
largely  at  the  mouth  with  fright,  and  disinfect  everything 
from  the  ornamental  weather-vane  on  the  Methodist  church 
to  the  pyramidal  pile  of  iron  cannon-balls  on  the  front  lawn 
of  the  G.  A.  R.  hall.  By  these  and  other  protective  measures 
the  epidemic  is  arrested  and  the  emergency  dies  a  sudden 
and  enthusiastic  death. 

Around  the  middle  of  January,  1921,  I  had  occasion  to 
investigate  the  state  of  affairs  in  a  Polish  town*  which  had 
a  population  of  eight  thousand.  There  were  a  number  of 
cases  of  typhus  in  the  town.  The  residents  themselves 
didn't  know  how  many,  but  they  thought  the  number  would 
be  about  three  hundred.  That  number,  according  to  them, 

*Kaluszyn,  on  the  trunk  road  between  Warsaw  and  Brest-Litovsk. 

67 


68  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

wasn't  worth  considering.  Typhus,  like  the  poor,  they  had 
always  with  them  in  the  winter.  There  was  a  great  deal  of 
diphtheria  and  scarlet  fever  in  the  town.  The  residents 
couldn't  tell  me  exactly  how  much;  but  there  were  several 
hundred  cases.  Nothing  serious,  they  insisted;  only  a  few 
hundred.  Less  than  three  miles  away  there  was  another 
town,  they  explained,  where  things  were  worse.  Practically 
every  family  in  that  town  had  at  least  one  case  of  typhus  in 
it.  Up  to  the  north  and  northeast  there  was  cholera;  but 
it  hadn't  reached  town — yet.  No  emergency  existed 
for  the  people  of  that  town,  in  their  judgment.  For  them, 
typhus  and  scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria  were  old  stories. 
Each  year  a  certain  number  of  people  had  to  have  them  and 
a  certain  number  had  to  die  of  them,  just  as  part  of  the 
potato  crop  had  to  freeze  in  the  ground.  Sickness  was  a 
part  of  the  scheme  of  things.  The  person  who  suggested  to 
them  that  they  were  confronted  by  an  emergency  would 
have  been  responsible  for  a  number  of  cracked  lips.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  perpetual  emergency  existed  for  them. 

In  the  same  way,  the  United  States  has  been  confronted 
by  an  immigration  emergency  for  years.  Starting  around 
1880,  the  immigrants  who  swarmed  into  the  United  States 
were  of  an  entirely  different  breed  from  the  people  who  dis- 
covered the  country,  colonized  it,  made  its  laws  and  devel- 
oped it.  These  new  and  different  people  came  in  waves,  like 
the  waves  of  an  endlessly  rising  tide.  Occasional  waves 
fell  short  of  preceding  waves;  but  in  general  they  surged 
to  higher  and  higher  levels.  In  the  year  1905  more  than 
a  million  of  them  came — more  than  forty  army  divisions. 
It  was  the  same  in  1906.  In  1907  the  wave  surged  over  the 
million-and-a-quarter  mark.  In  the  ten  years  which  ended 
June  30,  1914,  more  than  ten  millions  of  these  people  had 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       69 

entered  the  United  States.  They  sank  naturally  into  the 
slums  and  the  foreign  settlements ;  for  the  great  percentage 
of  them  had  always  lived  in  either  city  or  agricultural 
slums,  and  practically  all  of  them  had  come  to  America  to 
make  as  much  money  as  they  could  in  as  short  a  time  as 
possible,  so  that  they  were  willing  to  sacrifice  comfort  and 
cleanliness  and  everything  else  to  the  making  of  money. 
American  laborers  could  not  compete  with  them.  America 
was  protected  from  the  dumping  of  cheap  foreign  goods  on 
her  markets,  but  not  from  the  dumping  of  cheap  foreign 
labor.  America  was  protected  theoretically  from  the  physi- 
cal diseases  so  prevalent  in  Europe,  but  not  from  the  far 
more  prevalent  European  unrest  and  class  hatred  and 
political  ignorance  and  mental  incapacity  for  national  spirit. 
Instead  of  being  a  great  melting-pot — which  it  was  prior 
to  1880  because  of  the  similarity  of  the  early  Nordic  immi- 
grants— America  had  become  the  dumping-ground  for  the 
world's  human  riffraff,  who  couldn't  make  a  living  in  their 
own  countries.  These  statements  have  been  frequently 
repeated;  but  the  repetition  is  necessary  because  of  the 
peculiar  success  of  unrestricted-immigrationists  in  making 
America  believe  that  all  pre-war  immigration  was  the 
same  and  that  because  it  was  permitted  before  the  war  it 
should  be  permitted  to  the  same  extent  forever.  There  was 
not,  even  during  the  ten  years  before  the  war,  a  single 
argument  favoring  the  continuation  of  immigration  which 
was  based  on  the  needs  or  the  best  interests  of  America. 
Every  argument  in  behalf  of  unrestricted  immigration 
favored  special  alien  interests  and  special  industrial  inter- 
ests; and  in  the  minds  of  the  persons  who  presented  those 
arguments  there  was  no  thought  of  the  United  States. 
Emigration  since  the  war  from  the  great  European 


70  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

emigration  centers  presented  all  of  the  evils  of  the  pre-war 
immigration  plus  several  brand-new  evils  which  exuded 
viciousness  from  every  cavity  and  pore.  It  was  a  poisoned 
emigration.  Practically  every  reliable  American  who  has 
seen  European  emigration  as  it  was  flowing  at  its  principal 
sources  before  our  Emergency  Immigration  Law  dammed 
it  temporarily  will  vouch  for  the  truth  of  this  assertion.  It 
will  be  vouched  for  by  newspaper  men,  by  consuls,  by  mili- 
tary attaches,  by  representatives  of  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment sent  to  Europe  for  purposes  of  observation,  by  the 
employees  of  steamship  lines,  by  United  States  public  health 
officials,  by  the  representatives  of  purely  American  relief 
organizations,  by  American  business  men  who  are  not 
racially  affiliated  with  the  undesirable  emigrants,  and  by 
legations  and  embassies  of  the  United  States.  Certain  per- 
sons who  have  seen  European  emigration  at  its  sources  will 
deny  my  statements.  These  persons  will  be  the  officials  of 
steamship  lines,  a  few  large  employers  of  labor,  and  the 
representatives  of  certain  relief  organizations  which  have 
special  racial  connections  in  Europe.  All  these  persons  will 
deny  them  for  the  same  reasons  that  a  whisky  manufacturer 
fights  any  legislation  which  tends  to  cut  down  the  consump- 
tion of  whisky.  The  whisky  manufacturer  doesn't  care  how 
many  persons  get  drunk  on  his  product,  waste  the  money 
which  should  be  spent  on  food  and  clothes,  and  lower  their 
reliability,  decency  and  efficiency,  so  long  as  his  distillery 
continues  to  pay  dividends.  The  whisky  manufacturer  may 
be  sincere  in  his  attitude  on  the  drink  question:  he  may 
actually  believe  that  whisky  is  a  food — an  elevator  of  ideals 
— a  benefit  to  the  human  race.  The  advocates  of  unre- 
stricted immigration  may  also  be  sincere;  but  the  fact 
remains  that  they  get  the  money  while  America  suffers. 


I 


t/3 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       71 

Their  sincerity  is  impregnated,  so  to  speak,  with  a  distinct 
odor  of  fish. 

The  largest  emigration  center  in  Northern  Europe  since 
the  war  has  been  Warsaw,  the  capital  of  Poland.  Fifty 
thousand  vises  were  granted  by  the  American  consulate  in 
Warsaw  to  bearers  of  Polish  passports  during  the  year 
1920.  Later  in  1920  the  consulate  improved  its  facilities  for 
handling  emigrants,  and  during  1921  it  was  in  a  position  to 
grant  at  least  one  hundred  thousand  American  vises  to  the 
holders  of  Polish  passports.  These  numbers,  of  course,  do 
not  include  the  large  number  of  people  who  traveled  from 
Poland  to  America  on  false  passports,  forged  American 
vises,  and  counterfeit  American  ten-dollar  consular  fee 
stamps. 

The  majority  of  the  people  who  travel  on  Polish  pass- 
ports are  Jews.  For  some  weeks  the  percentage  of  Jews 
runs  as  high  as  eighty-five  per  cent.,  and  for  other  weeks  it 
drops  as  low  as,  but  never  lower  than,  seventy-five  per  cent. 
The  number  of  vises  granted  by  the  American  consulate  is 
only  a  very  small  percentage  of  the  number  it  would  have 
to  grant  if  all  those  who  wanted  to  go  to  America  were 
given  vises.  But  the  Polish  emigration  officials  and  offi- 
cials of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  have  made 
efforts  to  have  the  staff  of  the  American  consulate  enlarged, 
so  that  more  emigrants  can  be  expedited  to  America. 

The  Warsaw  consulate,  early  in  1921,  was  working  on 
vises  from  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  three  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon.  The  Polish  emigration  authorities  would 
have  liked  to  have  it  work  twenty-four  hours  a  day  instead 
of  six  hours,  so  that  Poland  could  get  rid  of  her  surplus 
population,  which  is  in  the  neighborhood  of  one  million. 
This  is  not  my  estimate,  not  the  estimate  of  the  Polish 


72  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

government;  but  the  estimate  of  Doctor  Dana  Durand,  a 
distinguished  economist,  director  of  the  last  United  States 
census,  and  technical  food  adviser  to  the  Polish  government 
for  the  Hoover  Mission  to  Poland.  Doctor  Durand  stated 
to  me  that  the  economic  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Poland  was 
very  bad;  that  there  was  not  nearly  enough  work  for  all 
of  them,  and  that  one  million  of  them,  in  order  to  live,  must 
go  elsewhere.  "They  would  be  very  bad  people  for 
America,"  said  Doctor  Durand,  "and  there  isn't  room  for 
them  in  Palestine.  Where  they  are  to  go  I  don't  know; 
but  they've  got  to  go  somewhere." 

This  argument  is  a  trifle  difficult  for  a  layman  to  fol- 
low. He  can't  understand  why  the  Jews  of  Poland  when 
out  of  work  must  rush  elsewhere ;  for  when  4,000,000  peo- 
ple in  America  are  jobless,  nobody  suggests  that  they  ought 
to  migrate  in  a  body. 

Nevertheless,  the  million  surplus  population  of  Poland — - 
Jews  all — are  the  people  that  the  Polish  emigration  authori- 
ties are  anxious  to  unload;  and  since  America  is  the 
favorite  dumping-ground,  they  were  making  every  ef- 
fort to  unload  them  in  America  in  1920  and  early  1921. 
An  official  of  the  Polish  Department  of  Emigration  stated 
to  an  American  government  official  in  Warsaw  that  Poland 
had  more  than  its  proportion  of  Jews;  and  that  America, 
having  less  than  its  proportion,  is  in  duty  bound  to  take 
them  off  Poland's  hands.  The  Polish  official  was  no  more 
interested  in  the  effect  on  America  of  such  a  transfer  than 
he  would  have  been  in  the  action  of  slaked  lime  on  the 
growth  of  New  Zealand  spinach.  America  may  rest  assured 
that  if  she  doesn't  look  out  for  her  own  interests  in  the 
matter  of  immigration,  nobody  else  will. 

I  had  a  long  talk  in  January,  1921,  with  the  Polish  com- 
missioner of  emigration  and  his  assistant.  They  declared 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       73 

firmly  and  uncompromisingly  that  America,  for  humani- 
tarian reasons,  was  morally  obligated  to  admit  every  person 
who  has  a  relative  in  America.  This  is  pure  flapdoodle. 
From  1905  to  1914,  inclusive,  over  ten  million  aliens, 
mostly  from  Central  and  Southeastern  Europe,  emigrated 
to  America.  They  came  from  the  lowest  layers  of  society; 
and  in  these  lowest  layers  one  invariably  finds  the  largest 
families.  Each  one  of  those  ten  million  aliens  who  emi- 
grated to  America  had,  at  an  absurdly  low  estimate,  ten 
relatives  left  in  Europe.  If,  for  humanitarian  reasons,  we 
must  take  in  a  million  or  two  million  Polish  Jews,  we  must 
also  take  in  a  large  slice  of  the  population  of  Serbia,  three- 
quarters  of  a  million  Greeks,  a  million  and  a  half  Italians,  a 
couple  of  million  Jews  from  Rumania,  Hungary  and  the 
Ukraine,  and  enormous  numbers  of  other  physically,  mor- 
ally and  financially  wrecked  people  of  Central  Europe.  We 
are  not  obligated  to  take  in  these  people  any  more  than  we 
are  obligated  to  dig  half  of  the  unexploded  shells  out  of  the 
battle-fields  of  Europe  and  bury  them  in  our  own  farm- 
lands for  our  own  plowshares  and  harrows  to  explode.  It 
would,  of  course,  be  a  nice  thing  to  do ;  but  only  a  madman 
would  seriously  insist  that  we  ought  to  do  it.  Yet  the  con- 
tinuance of  immigration  is  a  far  more  evil  thing  for 
America  than  the  planting  of  a  few  million  unexploded  shells 
would  ever  be. 

Advocates  of  unrestricted  immigration  frequently  state 
flatly,  and  always  imply,  that  present-day  emigration  from 
Europe  is  entirely  wives  to  husbands  or  vice  versa,  and  chil- 
dren to  parents  or  vice  versa.  This  is  erroneous  and  mis- 
leading. Our  immigration  for  the  last  thirty  years  has 
always  been  an  immigration  of  relatives  because  of  the  inex- 
haustible European  relative  crop.  The  beet  crop  may  fall 
down  with  a  thud ;  the  potato  crop  may  freeze ;  the  whisker 


74  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

crop  may  be  weak  and  backward ;  but  the  relative  crop  has 
always  flourished  and  will  always  continue  to  flourish  in 
Europe  with  a  luxuriance  that  will  make  the  green  bay- 
tree,  long  noted  for  its  flourishing  powers,  look  like  a  wilted 
lettuce-leaf.  This  fact  was  determined  years  ago  by  the 
United  States  Immigration  Commission.  The  relatives  in 
America  advertised  in  their  letters  the  soft  jobs  that  were 
to  be  had;  and  the  relatives  promptly  came  across,  as  one 
might  say.  There  is  nothing  about  immigration,  as  the 
present-day  generation  knows  it,  which  demands  any 
excess  of  sympathy,  or  any  rush  of  sentimentality  to  the 
head.  The  figures  of  the  Warsaw  consulate  for  late  1920 
and  early  1921  show  that  of  all  the  vises  granted,  twelve 
and  seven-tenths  per  cent,  were  granted  to  persons  going  to 
husbands  or  wives;  sixteen  and  two-tenths  were  going  to 
parents — and  of  these,  very  few  were  minors;  nine  and 
three-tenths  were  parents  going  to  children ;  forty-three  and 
three-tenths  were  going  to  brothers  and  sisters;  sixteen 
and  seven-tenths  were  going  to  cousins,  uncles,  aunts;  and 
one  and  eight-tenths  were  going  to  such  distant  relatives 
that  one  needed  a  telescope  to  discover  the  relationship. 

In  most  cases  the  relatives  to  whom  they  claim  to  be 
going  are  not  citizens  of  the  United  States.  A  small  per- 
centage have  their  "first  papers" — a  step  toward  citizenship 
which  can  be  taken  on  the  day  that  the  immigrants  land  in 
America,  which  means  next  to  nothing  and  which  is  only 
too  often  not  completed.  There  is  no  adequate  humanita- 
rian, economic  or  moral  reason  why  the  United  States  should 
continue  to  admit  the  cousins,  brothers,  sisters,  nieces  and 
nephews  of  non-citizens — or  of  citizens  either — if,  in  the 
opinion  of  competent  authorities,  they  are  undesirable. 
This  is  exactly  the  opinion  of  competent  authorities — 
except  that  none  of  them  would  phrase  it  so  conservatively. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       75 

The  type  of  passport  in  use  in  Poland  early  in  1921  was 
especially  adapted  for  the  unloading  of  a  surplus  or  undesir- 
able population.  It  was  not  a  passport  at  all,  as  we  under- 
stand it,  but  merely  an  identity  card.  It  asked  no  courtesies 
for  the  bearer;  and  in  a  majority  of  cases  it  even  failed  to 
state  his  nationality  or  citizenship.  In  the  case  of  Jews  the 
blank  on  the  passport  which  was  supposed  to  be  filled  in 
with  the  nationality  of  the  bearer  was  almost  invariably 
either  left  blank  or  filled  in  with  the  word  "Jewish"  or 
"Israelite."  In  repeated  instances  persons  came  to  the 
American  consulate  with  Polish  passports  which  gave  the 
nationality  of  the  bearers  as  Ruthenian  or  Ukrainian  or  Lith- 
uanian or  Russian-Polish.  In  other  words,  the  Polish  pass- 
port authorities  were  issuing  passports  to  people  from  other 
countries.  Such  a  passport  is  worth  about  thirty  kopecks 
in  Soviet  currency  to  the  immigration  authorities  of  a  coun- 
try which  is  attempting — as  is  the  United  States — to  bar 
undesirables. 

A  little  later  in  1921  the  Polish  authorities  went  a  little 
further  and  issued  a  new  type  of  passport.  It  was  exactly 
like  their  other  passport,  except  that  there  was  no  place  at 
all  on  it  where  the  nationality  of  the  bearer  could  be  inserted. 
The  attitude  of  the  Polish  authorities,  in  the  face  of  the 
howl  of  protest  which  went  up  from  the  American  consulate 
over  these  burlesque  passports,  was  that  the  mere  possession 
of  a  Polish  passport  should  be  sufficient  to  establish  a 
bearer's  citizenship  and  nationality.  Experience,  however, 
has  repeatedly  proved  that  it  does  neither.  Yet  if  America 
insists  that  nobody  but  Polish  citizens  travel  on  Polish 
passports,  the  only  result  will  be  a  tremendous  traffic  in 
forged  birth  certificates  and  other  documents  capable  of 
proving  conclusively  that  a  Bolshevik  from  the  Siberian 


76  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

tundras  has  really  lived  all  his  life  in  the  shadow  of  War- 
saw University. 

Now  the  boundaries  between  Poland  and  Soviet  Russia 
are  badly  warped  from  the  manner  in  which  they  have  been 
pushed  in  and  out.  To  know  where  the  boundary  is  at  any 
given  moment,  one  should  devote  a  matter  of  twenty-two 
hours  a  day  to  a  careful  study  of  the  boundary  problem,  and 
flip  a  coin  at  the  end  of  the  day  in  order  to  decide  whether 
to  make  a  five-  or  a  ten-mile  alteration  in  one's  figures. 
Americans  in  Poland  declare  that  the  train-cards  which  tell 
the  destination  of  trains  leaving  the  Vienna  station  in  War- 
saw have  to  have  new  names  painted  on  them  every  day, 
depending  on  whether  the  Polish  state  happens  to  be  expand- 
ing or  contracting  at  the  moment. 

In  the  vicinity  of  the  boundary,  none  of  the  residents  is 
quite  sure  whether  he  is  living  in  Poland  or  Soviet  Russia 
or  Lithuania  or  the  Ukraine.  But  when  the  Bolshevik 
armies  occupied  this  region  in  the  summer  of  1920,  young 
Jews  by  the  hundreds  from  every  town  and  city  soaked  up 
the  Bolshevik  doctrines  like  sponges.  The  Bolsheviks  have 
been  very  successful  in  getting  their  ideas  before  the  people; 
because  instead  of  depending  entirely  on  pamphlets  and 
books  and  newspapers,  they  have  distributed  great  numbers 
of  phonographs  and  phonograph  records  to  pour  the  doc- 
trines of  Father  Lenine  and  Uncle  Trotsky  into  the  flapping 
ears  of  the  proletariat.  The  young  Jews  ate  this  stuff  alive, 
as  the  saying  goes.  When  the  Bolshevik  armies  evacuated 
the  district  before  the  Polish  army,  thousands  of  young  Jews 
went  with  them  into  Soviet  Russia — partly  to  escape  the 
vengeance  which  they  feared  the  Poles  might  visit  on  them, 
partly  to  escape  being  drawn  into  the  Polish  army,  and 
partly  because  they  hoped  to  carry  on  small  trading  opera- 
tions with  the  Bolshevik  soldiers  and  with  the  people  in  the 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       77 

Russian  towns.  These  young  men  drifted  back  to  their 
homes  during  the  winter  of  1920-21,  and  great  numbers  of 
them  went  straight  to  America. 

A  steady  stream  of  Hebrew  refugees  also  poured  into 
Poland  from  Soviet  Russia,  driven  on  by  hunger  and  by  pan- 
ics to  which  the  Jews  so  frequently  fall  victims.  Our  consu- 
late in  Warsaw  is  thoroughly  familiar  with  these  panics, 
\vhich  are  of  periodic  occurrence.  When  they  are  in  prog- 
ress, the  people  are  unmanageable.  They  scream  and  fight 
and  trample  one  another  under  foot  at  the  consulate  door- 
way, and  nothing  but  brute  force  has  any  effect  upon  them. 

These  people  have  provided  a  fertile  field  for  Bolshevik 
propaganda;  for  they  have  been  against  the  ruling  class 
since  time  immemorial,  and  they  have  welcomed  the  Bol- 
shevik doctrines  as  glad  tidings  of  great  cheer.*  They  are 
going  to  America  by  every  boat;  and  it  is  a  poisoned  emi- 
gration. Emigration  from  these  districts  has  always  been  a 
very  bad  thing  for  America  because  of  its  non-productive 
and  parasitic  nature.  To-day  it  is  rank  poison. 

A  special  investigation  was  made  of  the  emigrant  move- 
ment by  a  man  who  started  at  Pinsk  and  worked  his  way 
out.  Pinsk  is  two  hundred  miles  from  Warsaw;  and  a  good 
part  of  that  distance  lies  in  Soviet  Russia,  The  person  who 
made  it  was  especially  qualified  to  obtain  information  from 
the  people  with  whom  he  traveled.  He  found  that  large 
numbers  of  the  emigrants  were  young  men  of  military  age, 


*Sir  Basil  Thompson,  in  charge  of  the  Special  Branch  at  Scotland 
Yard,  1913-1921— ihe  Special  Branch  being  England's  greatest  pro- 
tection against  spies  and  other  enemies  within — had  this  to  say  when 
his  war  activities  were  over:  "With  the  second  Russian  Revolution 
under  Lenine,  which  broke  out  in  November,  1917,  the  real  troubles  of 
the  civilized  world  began.  The  reverberations  were  felt  in  every 
country  where  discontent  was  seething;  and  since  discontent  is  gen- 
erally to  be  found  among  emigrant  Jews,  it  was  among  the  Jews  in 
every  land  that  the  Bolshevists  found  their  first  adherents." 


78  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  that  they  came  from  districts  which  were  directly  under 
the  Bolshevik  government.  In  the  districts  from  which  they 
came  were  agents  who  provided  them  with  false  passports 
and  escorted  them  to  ports  of  embarkation.  At  the  ports, 
if  they  were  lucky,  they  got  money  from  America.  The 
agent  furnished  them  with  all  affidavits  and  papers  neces- 
sary for  their  travels,  and  usually  shipped  them  to  the 
United  States  by  way  of  Antwerp  and  Canada.  Some  were 
going  by  way  of  Cuba  and  Mexico. 

Almost  every  American  government  official  in  the  north 
of  Europe  received  repeated  proofs  that  at  the  time  when 
America  was  deporting  Bolsheviks  by  tens,  she  was  letting 
them  in  by  thousands. 

The  false  passport,  phony  vise,  fake  affidavit  and  coun- 
terfeit stamp  business  reached  a  high  stage  of  development 
in  Poland.  Large  numbers  of  immigrants  entered  America 
from  Poland  late  in  1920  and  early  in  1921  on  forged  docu- 
ments; and  there  won't  be  any  perceptible  diminution  in 
the  graft  and  crookedness  and  chicanery  until  our  immigra- 
tion laws  are  so  altered  as  to  stop  the  indiscriminate  influx 
of  Europe's  human  derelicts  and  to  permit  our  immigrants 
to  be  selected  for  certain  purposes  at  the  source. 

The  dealing  in  fraudulent  passports  and  fraudulent  pass- 
port-accessories in  Poland  appeared  to  be  limited  entirely  to 
Jews.  This  was  also  true  in  Rumania  and  Hungary.  Many 
men  were  caught  making  and  selling  these  false  documents, 
and  they  were  always  Jews.  The  hundreds  who  were  caught 
traveling  on  them  were  always  Jews  as  well.  This  is  not 
anti-Jewish  propaganda,  but  straight  information  obtained 
from  American  consular  officials. 

Bolshevik  organization  existed  in  1920  and  192!  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  railroading  Bolshevik  propagandists  to 
America  by  means  of  false  passports  and  vises.  One  nest  pf 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       79 

seven  dealers  in  false  American  vises  was  rounded  up  in 
Warsaw,  and  six  of  the  seven  had  recently  come  to  Warsaw 
from  Soviet  Russia.  Most  of  the  cases  of  false-passport- 
dealing,  however,  are  those  of  individuals  or  groups  who 
see  an  excellent  chance  to  make  money  quickly  and  easily. 

Early  in  January,  1921,  an  investigator  started  out  alone 
from  the  Warsaw  consulate  to  locate  dealers  in  fraudulent 
passports.  The  only  method  which  he  used  was  that  of 
letting  it  be  known  that  he  was  willing  to  pay  for  enough 
false  papers  to  get  him  to  America.  He  was  obliged  to 
dicker  and  haggle  with  each  false  passport  merchant  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact ;  and  such  dickering  and  haggling 
take  up  a  lot  of  time.  Nevertheless,  between  two  o'clock 
on  a  Saturday  afternoon  and  two  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of 
the  following  day  he  secured  enough  evidence  to  arrest  and 
convict  twenty-five  dealers  in  fraudulent  passports. 

All  of  the  twenty-five  had  been  engaged  in  supplying 
false  passports,  false  American  vises  and  false  American 
affidavits  to  emigrants  for  such  a  length  of  time  that  their 
existence  and  their  addresses  were  common  knowledge  in 
Warsaw.  There  were  hundreds  of  others  in  Warsaw  alone ; 
and  in  every  other  city  and  town  in  Poland  there  were  other 
shoals  of  them. 

There  was  no  examination  of  passports  at  ports  of 
embarkation  until  January,  1921.  After  building  a  very 
cumbersome  passport-control  machine,  in  other  words,  we 
voluntarily  removed  a  few  nuts,  bolts,  cog-wheels  and  cam- 
shafts, and  then  wondered  why  it  squeaked  and  rattled  so 
horribly  whenever  it  moved.  Early  in  January,  1921,  the 
Rotterdam  consulate  began  to  scrutinize  the  passports  of  all 
emigrants  boarding  ships  in  Rotterdam.  There  was.  at  that 
time,  no  such  scrutiny  at  the  other  ports  of  embarkation — 
though  the  omission  was  ultimately  rectified.  As  a  result, 


8o  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

there  were  five  ports  in  Northern  Europe  from  which 
bearers  of  false  passports  could  embark  with  scarcely  any 
danger  of  detection.  When  they  were  stopped  at  one 
port,  they  sent  the  information  back  to  the  place  from  which 
they  came;  and  those  who  followed  them  went  to  other  ports. 
A  woman  came  down  to  Rotterdam  from  Poland  with  a  false 
American  vise  on  her  passport.  After  being  questioned,  she 
was  released  and  watched.  Her  first  move  was  to  go 
straight  to  a  telegraph  office  and  telegraph  to  the  man  in 
Warsaw  who  had  provided  her  with  the  false  vise  that  the 
Americans  had  detected  her.  If  they  are  stopped  at  all  ports, 
they  will  originate  new  schemes  of  getting  to  America — if 
our  legislators  are  foolish  enough  to  refuse  to  make  immi- 
gration a  rigidly  selective  matter  designed  purely  to  meet 
the  needs  of  America.  So  long  as  immigration  is  a  matter 
of  somebody  in  Europe  getting  a  vise  from  an  American 
consulate,  there  will  be  bribery,  corruption  and  the  admission 
of  undesirables.  Wherever  there  is  a  weak  spot,  it  will  be 
found.  A  weak  spot  was  found  in  one  of  our  Northern 
European  consulates  during  1920  by  emigrants  and  strong 
emigration  interests,  and  the  consulate  almost  had  to  be  torn 
up  by  the  roots. 

In  the  opinion  of  Americans  who  are  competent  to  judge, 
the  emigration  of  Jews  from  Poland  to  America  would  be 
reduced  by  more  than  one-half  if  the  activities  of  the  Hebrew 
Immigrant  Aid  Society — known  throughout  Europe  as 
"Hias" — were  to  cease  in  Europe.  Hias  is  not  exactly  what 
its  name  implies.  When  an  alien  leaves  Europe  for  America, 
he  is  an  emigrant.  When  he  arrives  in  America,  he  is  an  im- 
migrant. If  Hias  stopped  with  being  an  Immigrant  aid  so- 
ciety, and  confined  its  work  to  America  alone,  nobody  could 
have  the  slightest  objection.  When,  however,  it  becomes  an 
Emigrant  aid  society  and  moves  its  activities  to  Europe,  it 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       81 

automatically  becomes  an  artificial  stimulator  of  emigra- 
tion ;  and  stimulated  emigration  has  always  been  recognized 
by  every  immigration  authority  in  America  as  a  very  offen- 
sive and  undesirable  thing.  It  was  offensive  and  undesirable 
in  the  past  because  those  who  left  their  homes  to  go  to 
America  did  not  do  so  in  answer  to  an  economic  demand  in 
this  country,  and  because  America  was  in  no  way  benefited 
by  them.  The  Jews  who  are  coming  to  America  to-day  are 
— through  no  fault  of  their  own — undesirable  for  these 
reasons  and  for  several  others  as  well.  In  the  old  days  there 
were  two  great  stimulators  of  emigration  in  Central  and 
Southeastern  Europe:  the  transportation  agents  and  the 
labor  agents.  The  work  of  these  agents  in  stimulating  emi- 
gration was  characterized  by  the  United  States  Commis- 
sioner General  of  Immigration  in  1909  as  a  "crying  shame." 
Hias  is  as  much  of  an  emigration  stimulator  in  the  sections 
where  it  operates  as  transportation  agents  and  labor  agents 
were  before  their  activities  became  illegal  and  were  for- 
bidden. Hias  does  a  great  amount  of  good  for  the  helpless, 
pauperized  and  resourceless  Jewish  emigrants  who  are  rush- 
ing out  of  Europe ;  but  it  does  a  terrible  wrong  to  America 
by  assisting  them  to  come  in  such  great  numbers. 

Information  concerning  the  activities  of  Hias  is  spread 
through  Poland  by  word  of  mouth,  by  letters  from  friends 
and  relatives  who  have  been  helped  by  it,  and  by  a  newspaper 
published  in  Warsaw  called  Die  Emigrant.  This  paper  is 
said  to  be  published  by  private  enterprise;  but  it  is  mostly 
devoted  to  the  activities  of  the  Hias  organization.  Its  chief 
purpose  is  to  provide  prospective  emigrants  with  informa- 
tion as  to  how  to  get  to  America.  It  was  first  published  in 
December,  1920;  and  the  first  edition  of  eleven  thousand 
copies  was  sold  in  about  three  hours. 

The  American  flag  floats  from  a  flagstaff  above  the  door 


82  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

of  the  Hias  office  in  Warsaw,  and — when  conditions  are 
normal,  as  they  were  in  early  1921 — under  this  flag  pass  one 
thousand  prospective  Hebrew  emigrants  every  day.  Every 
one  of  the  thousand  is  ruthlessly  selfish,  and  is  determined — 
as  the  Warsaw  head  of  the  Hias  organization  stated — to 
get  there  first.  Nevertheless,  the  struggling,  excited,  irri- 
tating crowd  is  handled  quietly,  expeditiously  and  patiently 
by  Hias.  It  is  a  remarkably  efficient  and  excellent  organiza- 
tion ;  and  the  work  for  which  it  exists  could  not  be  done  in  a 
more  capable  and  praiseworthy  manner. 

When  the  doors  of  the  Hias  office  are  thrown  open  every 
morning  and  the  struggling  crowd  claws  and  fights  its  way 
up  the  twisted  stairway  that  leads  from  the  courtyard  to 
the  offices,  each  applicant  is  given  a  green  card,  a  red  card, 
or  a  blue  card,  depending  on  whether  he  has  come  to  cable 
to  his  relatives  in  America,  to  get  money  which  has  been  sent 
from  America,  or  to  get  his  passport.  At  the  top  of  the  stair- 
way the  applicants  are  separated  into  green,  blue  or  red 
lines,  given  numbers  and  passed  through  in  order. 

In  the  cable-room  they  pass  before  a  long  desk  behind 
which  Hias  employees  take  the  names  of  the  emigrants'  rela- 
tives in  America  and  write  cables  asking  for  money.  At  the 
same  time  the  cables  are  registered;  and  a  glance  at  the 
Hias  card-index  system  shows  the  number  of  a  given  case, 
the  date  on  which  the  cable  was  sent,  the  name  of  the  emi- 
grant who  sent  the  cable,  the  name  of  the  person  in  America 
to  whom  it  was  sent,  the  name  of  the  employee  who  wrote 
the  cable  for  the  emigrant  and  the  amount  of  money  asked 
for.  Later  the  emigrant  returns  for  the  answer.  He  pre- 
sents his  numbered  card  at  the  cashier's  window,  and  if  the 
Hias  checking  system  shows  that  he  is  the  right  person,  he 
gets  his  money  in  American  dollars.  Seventy  per  cent,  of 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       83 

those  who  cable  receive  favorable  replies  in  from  eight  days 
to  three  weeks. 

If  no  answer  is  received  to  the  cable  in  three  weeks'  time, 
the  Hias  organization  takes  the  matter  up  once  more. 
Another  cable  is  sent.  If  that  goes  unanswered  the  War- 
saw Hias  sends  an  executive  cable  to  the  New  York  Hias. 
This  cable  goes  every  day,  and  contains  the  names  of  all 
those  who  should  have  answered  by  that  time,  but  haven't 
done  so.  Thus,  the  Warsaw  cable  will  contain  the  phrase 
"Jacob  Goldberg  sent  cable  Samuel  Goldberg  for  $300. 
Locate."  Samuel  Goldberg  may  be  a  resident  of  New  York 
or  of  Chicago  or  of  Detroit.  Wherever  he  may  be,  an 
American  Hias  office  gets  in  touch  with  him  and  asks 
bruskly  why  he  hasn't  answered  the  request  of  Jacob  Gold- 
berg for  three  hundred  dollars.  Samuel  Goldberg's  address 
may  have  changed.  If  that  has  happened,  the  Hias 
organization  in  America  sends  out  special  messengers, 
locates  his  new  address  and  tells  him  to  hurry  up  and  answer 
Jacob  Goldberg's  cable.  If  he  is  still  reluctant,  Hias  works 
on  his  sympathies  by  telling  him  of  the  sufferings  which 
Jacob  Goldberg  is  undergoing.  Almost  invariably  the 
money  is  sent;  of  course,  through  Hias.  Doctor  Schluger, 
head  of  the  Warsaw  Hias,  told  me  that  during  December, 
1920,  Hias  paid  out  half  a  million  American  dollars  to 
emigrants. 

It  has  been  quite  a  task,  occasionally,  for  Hias  to  locate 
enough  American  dollars  to  pay  out  the  large  amounts 
cabled  to  its  clients.  Accordingly  it  has  entered  into  an 
arrangement  with  the  steamship  companies  whereby, 
instead  of  paying  the  whole  sum  in  cash,  it  pays  part  cash 
and  the  remainder  in  an  order  on  a  steamship  company  for 
a  ticket.  If  the  emigrant  is  robbed,  then,  he  only  loses  a 


84  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

part  of  his  money,  since  the  steamship  order  can  be  stopped. 

Great  numbers  of  affidavits  are  constantly  received  at 
the  Hias  office  for  Polish  Jews  whose  relatives  wish  them 
to  come  to  America.  In  many  cases  the  persons  for  whom 
they  are  intended  are  not  registered  with  Hias.  In  these 
cases,  through  its  correspondence  department,  Hias  locates 
them.  It  maintains  standing  advertisements  in  all  the  Jewish 
newspapers  in  Warsaw  setting  forth,  in  three  columns,  the 
names  of  the  persons  for  whom  affidavits,  money  and  steam- 
ship tickets  are  waiting. 

All  the  detail  work  in  connection  with  securing  pass- 
ports from  the  Polish  government  for  Jews  is  done  by 
Hias.  It  takes  the  applications  and  the  necessary  documents 
from  its  clients,  bunches  them,  presents  them  to  the  proper 
Polish  authorities;  and  all  that  the  clients  need  to  do  is  to 
come  around  on  the  proper  day  and  collect  them. 

According  to  the  Polish  law,  an  emigrant  must  have  his 
steamship  ticket  before  he  can  get  his  vise  to  leave  Poland. 
When  Hias  has  secured  the  steamship  tickets  for  its  clients, 
the  clients  go  to  the  Hias  office  and  make  a  formal  appli- 
cation for  a  vise.  At  the  end  of  each  day  all  of  the  vise 
applications  are  tied  up  and  carried  to  the  Polish  emigration 
office;  and  there,  without  further  inquiry  or  formality,  vises 
are  issued  to  every  one  whose  application  has  been  presented 
by  Hias.  To  all  extents  and  purposes,  the  Hebrew  Immi- 
grant Aid  Society  might  as  well  be  issuing  Polish  vises; 
and  the  Polish  government  could  easily  cut  down  overhead 
expenses  without  relinquishing  much  of  its  present  passport 
control  by  moving  its  emigration  offices  down  to  a  corner 
of  one  of  the  Hias  offices  and  allowing  Hias  officials  to 
undertake  the  onerous  work  of  shoving  out  both  passports 
and  vises.  An  attempt  was  actually  made  by  the  Hebrew 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       85 

Immigration  Aid  Society  to  persuade  the  Department  of 
State  of  the  United  States  to  allow  American  vises  to  be 
issued  by  Hias  officials  in  Europe  without  interference  by 
American  consuls,  so  that  Jews  would  not  be  put  to  the 
annoyance  of  going  all  the  way  to  an  American  consulate 
and  of  standing  in  line  in  order  to  get  an  American  vise. 

The  Hias  organization  is  one  of  the  smoothest  and  most 
capable  travel  agencies  that  ever  operated.  If  its  operations 
should  continue  to  develop  in  the  future  with  the  same  over- 
whelming success  that  characterized  them  during  the  year 
1920,  and  if  the  United  States  doesn't  produce  less  talk  and 
more  action  as  regards  immigration,  a  majority  of  the 
Jewish  population  of  Europe  will  be  transferred  to  America 
in  one  of  the  most  stupendous  Cook's  tours  ever  known. 
The  organization  is  so  strong,  so  efficient  and  so  energetic 
that  no  other  people  can  compete  with  the  Jews  in  the  mat- 
ter of  emigration  to  America. 

Any  ordinary  quarters  in  Warsaw  are  quite  incapable 
of  accommodating  the  howling,  fighting,  frantic  crowds 
that  have  been  known  to  besiege  the  American  consulate. 
During  the  Bolshevik  advance  in  the  summer  of  1920, 
crowds  of  five  thousand  Jews,  mad  with  fear  of  what 
the  Bolsheviks  and  the  Poles  together  might  do  to  them,  and 
made  doubly  unmanageable  by  their  incredible  and  ruthless 
selfishness,  almost  wrecked  the  consulate  repeatedly.  In 
order  to  get  this  crowd  under  cover,  the  consulate  secured 
an  enormous  cement-floored,  glass-roofed  market  known 
as  St.  George's  Bazaar.  This  is  Warsaw's  kosher  meat 
market.  From  half  past  three  in  the  afternoon  till  night  it 
is  filled  with  yelling,  shrieking  butchers  and  meat-sellers  and 
meat-buyers.  Beeves  hang  from  the  hooks  of  movable 
racks,  and  the  floor  is  slippery  with  blood.  From  nine  in 


86  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  morning  until  three  in  the  afternoon  it  is  the  vise  office 
of  the  American  consulate.  A  triple  line  of  people  starts 
in  the  middle  of  the  cement  floor,  twists  around  in  a  long 
queue  to  a  staircase  leading  to  the  gallery  which  surrounds 
the  market,  extends  up  the  staircase,  along  sixty  yards  of 
the  gallery,  and  into  the  offices  themselves.* 

There  is  almost  as  much  bribery  and  corruption  con- 
nected with  the  emigrant  lines  at  the  Warsaw  consulate  as 
there  is  everywhere  else  in  Poland.  The  moral  breakdown 
in  Europe,  coupled  with  the  extreme  need  for  money  which 
exists  on  every  hand,  has  made  bribery  an  accepted  part  of 
the  daily  existence  for  people  who  want  to  get  results  in  any 
part  of  Central  Europe.  The  price  of  a  hotel  room  in  War- 
saw may  be  only  two  or  three  hundred  Polish  marks  a  day ; 
but  in  order  to  get  it  one  must  distribute  bribes  ranging  from 
ten  thousand  to  fifty  thousand  marks.  This  isn't  quite  as 
imposing  as  it  sounds;  for  in  January  of  1921  there  were 
times  when  one  American  dollar  would  purchase  one  thou- 
sand marks,  and  a  dinner  for  four  people  at  a  good  restau- 
rant frequently  cost  six  or  seven  thousand  marks. t  Conse- 
quently, every  one  needs  all  the  money  he  can  get  in  order 
to  live.  Hallway  porters  accept  bribes  for  a  train-seat,  and 
then  sell  the  same  seat  to  persons  who  offer  higher  bribes. 
The  conductor  will  then  accept  a  fat  bribe  from  Briber 
No.  i  and  eject  Briber  No.  2  from  his  seat.  When  one  goes 
to  his  hotel  at  night,  he  bribes  the  hall  porter  to  let  him  in ; 


*Late  in  1921,  the  sanitation  authorities  of  the  City  of  Warsaw  re- 
fused to  allow  this  market  to  be  used  by  emigrants  to  America  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  they  contaminated  the  meat.  The  vise  office 
therefore  had  to  be  moved  back  to  the  consulate,  where  there  is  noth- 
ing to  contaminate  but  American  consular  officers. 

fit  is  impossible  to  keep  up  with  the  rapid  descent  of  the  Polish 
mark.  In  September,  1921,  one  American  dollar  would  buy  5,000 
Polish  marks. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       87 

and  when  he  gets  to  his  room  he  must  slip  the  floor  porter 
a  few  hundred  marks  to  turn  on  the  electricity  long  enough 
to  let  him  see  where  the  chambermaid  has  concealed  his 
pajamas — and  if  he  doesn't  slip  him  enough  he'll  have  to 
park  his  trousers  on  the  floor  and  feel  his  way  to  bed 
through  the  murk  of  a  Polish  hotel-room,  thick  with  a  cab- 
bage-soupy and  a  Noah's-arkish  odor.  Even  carriage  driv- 
ers must  be  bribed  to  make  a  trip. 

It  is  no  wonder,  with  the  existence  of  such  an  atmos- 
phere, that  there  is  crookedness  in  the  consulate  lines.  There 
are  persons  connected  with  the  buildings  in  which  the  lines 
assemble  who  sell  advantageous  places ;  even  the  police,  put 
there  by  the  government  to  protect  the  emigrants  and  keep 
order  among  them,  have  been  as  guilty  as  the  most  grasping 
janitor.  The  subordinate  personnel  of  the  consulate  has 
succumbed  at  times;  for  many  of  the  consular  employees 
must  from  necessity  be  local  talent,  and  are  therefore  some- 
times susceptible  to  bribery.  The  consulate  has  done  its  best 
to  stop  the  graft  and  the  fighting  in  the  lines.  It  issues  num- 
bered cards  to  a  certain  number  of  applicants  a  day — from 
three  to  five  hundred  of  them.  These  cards  entitle  the  bear- 
ers to  return  a  few  days  later  to  file  their  applications  for 
vises.  They  are  issued  in  series,  so  that  any  tampering  with 
the  number  of  the  card  is  instantly  obvious.  One  day  after 
their  second  visit  the  applicants  return  and  receive  their 
passports  duly  stamped  with  American  vises.  Thus  the 
consulate  is  no  longer  besieged  by  crowds  too  large  to 
handle.  The  Polish  Emigration  Bureau  and  Hias,  however, 
protest  bitterly  because  the  consulate  will  not  employ  a  larger 
staff  and  consequently  handle  larger  numbers  of  emigrants. 
If  the  Warsaw  consulate  employed  a  thousand  persons  on 
vise  work,  Poland  would  still  grumble  because  America 


88  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

wasn't  taking-  undesirables  off  her  hands  with  sufficient 
rapidity. 

About  twelve  hours  due  north  of  Warsaw,  on  the  Baltic, 
lies  the  ancient  city  of  Danzig,  which,  six  or  seven  hundred 
years  ago,  was  one  of  the  chief  strongholds  of  the  original 
League  of  Nations,  known  as  the  Hanseatic  League,  and  a 
popular  hang-out  for  the  romantic  but  hard-boiled  Robber 
Knights.  Danzig  is  in  East  Prussia,  and  East  Prussia  fits 
down  into  the  top  of  goblet-shaped  Poland  as  an  egg  fits 
into  an  egg-cup.  It  used  to  be  the  ancient  seaport  of  Poland ; 
but  now  it  is  entirely  Germanized.  Consequently  it  has  been 
made  a  free  city,  and  belongs  neither  to  Germany  nor  to 
Poland.  For  the  tourist  it  is  a  fascinating  city  on  account 
of  its  seven-hundred-year-old  brick  cathedral  and  brick 
grain-elevator,  its  amber  shops  with  amber  newly  fished  out 
of  the  BaltiCj  its  jazzy  cabarets  and  restaurants.  Most  of 
the  Northern  European  cities  seem  cold  and  gray  and 
depressing  to  a  traveler;  but  Danzig  seems  warmer  and 
more  colorful — possibly  because  of  its  ancient  bricks  and 
the  soft  golds  of  its  amber.  For  emigrants,  however,  Dan- 
zig is  a  complete  frost.  If  you  tried  to  tell  them  anything 
about  its  warm  reds  and  its  soft  golds,  they  would  stare  at 
you  wildly  and  wonder  whether  or  not  you  were  on  the 
verge  of  becoming  violent. 

Among  the  emigrants — especially  among  the  emigrants 
who  have  never  been  there — Danzig  has  a  horrible  reputa- 
tion. They  speak  of  it  with  the  same  loathing  with  which 
the  members  of  a  Maine  Dorcas  Society  might  speak  of  a 
pool-room  where  there  were  Unspeakable  Goings  On.  Emi- 
grants in  Paris  and  Antwerp,  who  had  sedulously  avoided 
Danzig  in  their  travels  from  Poland,  fairly  shook  in  their 
shoes  with  reflected  terror  as  they  told  me  wild  tales  of  the 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       89 

atrocities  and  indignities  inflicted  on  Polish  Jews  by  Poles 
on  the  journey  between  Warsaw  and  Danzig,  and  in  Dan- 
zig- itself.  Mr.  Chapira,  head  of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant 
Aid  Society  in  Paris,  told  me  that  the  "situation  in  Danzig 
is  miserable,  and  Jewish  emigrants  would  rather  see  them- 
selves dead  than  pass  through  Polish  jurisdiction." 

In  1921,  nevertheless,  about  three  thousand  emigrants 
were  concentrated  in  Danzig  every  week,  and  between 
eighty  and  ninety  per  cent,  of  them  were  Jews. 

They  travel  up  from  Warsaw  in  special  emigrant  trains, 
which  pass  straight  through  and  are  not  subject  to  examina- 
tion or  interference.  There  is  no  mistreatment  of  any  emi- 
grants on  these  trains.  The  emigrants  themselves  state  that 
this  is  so,  as  well  as  all  officials,  American,  Jewish  and 
Polish.  The  emigration  camp  at  Danzig  is  not  under  Pol- 
ish supervision,  but  under  the  supervision  of  the  City  of 
Danzig.  The  officials  and  the  employees  are  German,  and 
the  camp  is  run  to  conform  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  sug- 
gestions of  the  United  States  Public  Health  Service,  which 
is  represented  at  the  camp  every  day  and  all  day  by  a  watch- 
ful and  efficient  American  medical  officer.  This  young 
man  is  extremely  unpopular,  professionally,  with  the  steam- 
ship agents  in  Danzig.  They  are  anxious,  of  course,  to  ship 
as  many  passengers  as  possible  to  America,  and  they  find 
it  very  irritating  when  an  American  public  health  official 
says  coldly  and  inflexibly  that  unless  emigrants  are  properly 
deloused,  he  won't  put  his  O.  K.  on  the  ships'  papers. 
Steamship  agents  in  Europe  wouldn't  have  the  slightest 
objection  to  shipping  all  the  typhus  lice  in  Europe  to  America 
if  they  could  ship  them  on  steerage  passengers. 

When  the  emigrants  arrive  in  Danzig,  they  are  met  by 
employees  of  the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  and  con- 


90  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ducted  to  the  Troyl  Emigrant  Camp.  As  they  arrive  in  the 
camp,  they  are  sent  at  once  to  the  delousing  stations.  Their 
baggage  and  heavy  outer  wraps  are  put  in  small  rooms  and 
heavily  gassed  in  order  to  destroy  the  lice  and  the  germs 
that  are  usually  present.  The  gassing  is  accomplished  by 
tightly  sealing  up  the  rooms,  attaching  tubes  to  small  holes 
in  the  doors  and  forcing  hydrocyanic  acid  and  chlorene  gas 
through  the  tubes.  Heartrending — to  quote  the  leading 
sob-artists — scenes  are  witnessed  when  the  emigrants  gather 
around  the  doors  and  almost  go  mad  in  their  fear  that 
something  may  have  happened  to  their  favorite  shawls  and 
overcoats.  When  the  doors  are  thrown  open,  they  fight 
frantically  with  the  guards  to  get  in  at  once  and  claim  their 
belongings.  When  prevented,  for  fear  they  may  be  gassed, 
their  moans  and  tears  would  convince  almost  any  passer-by 
that  they  were  being  hideously  maltreated. 

No  matter  how  late  at  night  the  emigrants  may  arrive 
at  the  camp,  the  fires  are  kindled  in  the  delousers  and  the 
crowd  is  put  through  its  first  delousing.  Later  the  emi- 
grants are  deloused  a  second  time  to  make  sure  of  the  nits 
which  hatched  out  after  the  first  session.  I  first  visited  the 
Troyl  Camp  in  the  early  afternoon,  and  there  was  no  activity 
in  the  first  delousing  hut  at  which  I  stopped.  I  asked  the 
ponderous  German  in  charge  of  the  boilers  why  business  was 
so  slack.  He  replied  that  five  hundred  and  fifty  emigrants 
had  arrived  at  the  camps  on  the  preceding  day,  that  they 
started  through  the  delousing  hut  at  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  and  that  the  whole  plant  had  been  running  at  top 
speed  until  six  o'clock  that  morning.  During  the  Bolshevik 
drive  in  the  summer  of  1920  the  emigrants  poured  into  Dan- 
zig in  panic-stricken  streams.  The  capacity  of  the  Troyl 
Camp  is  three  thousand ;  but  at  one  time  during  that  period 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       91 

there  were  seven  thousand  of  them  crammed  into  every  nook 
and  corner.  The  delousers  cracked  under  the  strain  and  the 
camp  got  lousy.  Since  then  they  have  taken  as  few  chances 
as  possible. 

The  delousing  to  which  all  emigrants  passing  through 
Danzig  are  obliged  to  submit  appears  to  be  one  of  the  chief 
reasons  for  the  bad  reputation  which  Danzig  has  among 
Hebrew  emigrants.  The  Jews  object  strenuously  to  being 
deloused,  and  the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  constantly 
brings  pressure  to  bear  on  the  emigrant  camp  officials  and 
on  the  United  States  public  health  officer  to  modify  the 
quarantine  regulations  or  to  exempt  individual  emigrants 
from  delousing  for  various  reasons.  The  claim  is  always 
made  that  the  persons  for  whom  the  favors  are  asked  are 
free  from  lice.  The  claim  is  erroneous  ninety-nine  times 
out  of  a  hundred. 

There  are  many  ports  in  Europe  where  the  precautionary 
measures  and  the  medical  examinations  are  far  less  efficient 
than  at  Danzig.  Cholera  had  broken  out  in  the  northeastern 
part  of  Poland;  and  during  the  week  of  January  9,  1921, 
alone,  there  were  thirty-two  emigrants  destined  for  America 
from  the  cholera-infected  districts  of  Grodno,  Vilna  and 
Buszasz.  Yet  in  January,  1921,  there  were  only  two 
European  ports  where  the  question  of  isolating  and  watching 
the  emigrants  from  cholera  districts  had  even  been  con- 
sidered. The  United  States  is  a  great  and  progressive 
nation,  but  it  has  been  even  more  flabby  in  protecting  its 
citizens  against  the  filth-peril  of  Eastern  Europe  than  it  was 
in  preparing  itself  against  the  military  peril  of  the  Central 
Powers  when  war  was  inevitable.  And  that,  for  flabbiness, 
would  make  a  dead  eel  look  to  its  laurels. 

There  are  some  other  jolly  little  diseases  rolling  around 


92  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Eastern  Europe  which — unless  the  immigrant  streams  are 
permanently  dammed — will  be  brought  to  America  in  due 
season  and  presented  to  our  citizens  with  the  best  wishes  of 
the  World's  Greatest  Mess.  Encephalitis  is  one  of  them.  It 
is  becoming  quite  a  popular  disease  in  the  sections  from 
which  most  of  our  immigrants  come.  It  starts  with  hiccups 
and  ends  with  paralysis.  The  Plague  is  another  that  ought 
to  be  due  to  arrive  in  our  midst  fairly  soon — unless  our 
legislators  cease  to  exude  hot  air  on  the  subject  of  immigra- 
tion and  take  a  few  of  the  steps  which  should  have  been 
taken  a  score  of  years  ago. 

When  the  men's  hair  has  been  clipped,  they  are  made  to 
go  under  hot  showers  and  soap  themselves  thoroughly. 
Apparently  it  is  the  first  bath  that  some  of  them  ever  had 
in  their  lives.  Many  of  the  men  are  suffering  from  what 
the  doctors  call  Vagabond  Disease.  This  is  the  result  of 
years  of  dirt  and  the  bites  of  an  unknown  amount  of  vermin ; 
and  the  person  who  has  it  might  with  reason  be  dubbed 
"hard-bitten."  The  skin  of  those  who  have  it  is  covered 
with  grayish-brown  patches  and  is  tough  and  leathery. 
Many  of  the  older  women  have  bathed  so  seldom  that  their 
skins  are  almost  battle-ship  gray  in  color. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  delousing  plant  which  a  lay- 
man can  not  understand — no  matter  how  often  he  is  told — 
is  the  reason  why  men's  heads  are  clipped  to  remove  lice  and 
nits,  but  why  women's  heads  are  not  also  clipped  and  why 
old  men  with  luxuriant  beards  are  not  obliged  to  shave.  In 
the  latter  cases,  the  old  men  insist  that  they  are  entitled  to 
retain  their  beards  for  religious  reasons.  If,  in  the  opinion 
of  delousing  experts,  this  argument  is  all  right,  there  seems 
to  be  no  reason  why  middle-aged  and  young  men  should  not 
be  allowed  to  retain  their  hair — and  incidentally  their  nits — 
for  sentimental  reasons. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       93 

The  Danzig  Emigrant  Camp  is  run  by  the  city  of  Dan- 
zig primarily  as  a  money-making  venture.  Each  emigrant 
pays  sixty  German  marks  for  his  first  delousing  and  another 
sixty  for  his  second  treatment.  For  food  each  adult  pays 
thirty  German  marks  a  day,  while  the  children  are  fed  for 
eighteen  marks  a  day.  There  are  a  great  many  emigrants 
who  haven't  enough  money  to  meet  these  charges.  The 
Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  has  an  agreement  with  the 
directors  of  the  emigration  camp  whereby  the  loss  resulting 
from  inability  on  the  part  of  emigrants  to  pay  for  delousing, 
lodging  and  subsistence  shall  be  met  by  the  two  organiza- 
tions on  a  fifty-fifty  basis.  The  secretary  for  Europe  of 
the  Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society  informed  an  American 
official  late  in  1920  that  they  had  paid  two  such  bills  of  over 
half  a  million  marks  apiece,  to  say  nothing  of  smaller  ones. 

A  striking  example  of  the  infectious  nature  of  emigra- 
tion may  be  seen  in  Danzig.  As  things  go  in  Europe,  Dan- 
zig is  a  pretty  good  city  in  which  to  live.  Prices  aren't  out 
of  reach,  and  work  is  fairly  plentiful.  Yet  the  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  German  residents  to  emigrate  to  America  is  prac- 
tically universal.  It  is  said  that  of  the  hundreds  of 
employees  in  the  Emigration  Camp,  there  isn't  one,  from  the 
surgeons  and  nurses  down  to  the  cooks,  who  isn't  obsessed 
with  the  idea  of  getting  to  America.  They  talk  about  it  all 
the  time,  and  they  attempt  to  enlist  the  assistance  of  every 
American  with  whom  they  come  in  contact. 

I  talked  with  a  great  many  of  the  American-bound  emi- 
grants at  the  Troyl  Camp,  confining  myself  mostly  to  the 
men  between  eighteen  and  forty  years  of  age.  Men  of  this 
age  seemed  to  comprise  about  two-fifths  of  the  entire  num- 
ber. The  women  and  old  men  were  usually  going  to  join 
close  relatives,  and  agreed  that  Poland  was  a  good  place  to 


94  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

get  away  from  because  of  the  difficulty  of  getting  food 
and  clothes. 

The  young  men  were  universal  in  declaring  that  business 
was  terrible,  and  that  they  were  going  to  America  for  more 
business.  The  fact  that  a  few  million  men  are  out  of  work 
in  America  means  nothing  whatever  to  them.  Every  one 
to  whom  I  talked  was  confident  that  he  could  find  something 
to  do.  Every  one  was  going  to  a  large  city,  where  he  had 
a  relative.  One  morning,  at  the  Troyl  Camp,  I  had  a  semi- 
circle of  nineteen  young  men  in  front  of  me  answering  ques- 
tions. I  asked  them  the  question  "Where  are  you  going?" 
and  told  them  to  answer  in  turn.  The  answers  were  as 
follows:  "New  York,  New  York,  Brooklyn,  New  York. 
Wheeling,  New  York,  Chicago,  Brooklyn,  Detroit,  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Philadelphia,  Brooklyn,  New  York, 
New  York,  Chicago,  Brooklyn,  Boston,  New  York."  If 
their  answers  had  ended  with  Philadelphia  instead  of  New 
York,  I  might  have  thought  I  was  listening  to  a  report  on 
the  standing  of  the  clubs  in  some  sort  of  Big  League  free- 
for-all.  In  the  same  way  they  told  me  the  relatives  to  whom 
they  were  going,  and  my  note-book  showed  the  following 
answers:  "Sister-in-law,  sister-in-law,  brother,  brother-in- 
law,  cousin,  sister,  cousin,  cousin,  uncle,  brother,  aunt,  aunt, 
sister-in-law,  uncle,  sister,  cousin,  cousin,  cousin,  uncle."  I 
questioned  several  other  clusters  of  young  men  on  that  day 
and  on  other  days,  and  the  results  were  practically  identical 
with  the  ones  I  have  quoted. 

We  spoke  about  schools  in  America.  It  was  the  general 
understanding  of  the  men  with  families  that  the  Jewish 
language  is  taught  in  Jewish  schools  in  America  at  the  public 
expense.  I  told  them  that  this  was  not  so.  They  said  that 
they  were  very  sorry  that  it  wasn't  so,  and  that  they  would 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY       95 

overcome  the  difficulty  by  teaching  their  children  Hebrew 
in  their  homes  when  the  American  schools  were  closed  for 
the  day.  One  of  the  clusters  with  which  I  talked  touched 
on  the  subject  of  fighting;  and  its  members  were  unanimous 
in  declaring  that  nothing  on  earth  would  make  them  fight 
for  Poland.  Poland,  they  said,  did  not  give  them  equal 
rights  with  the  Poles.  I  went  into  the  matter  with  two  of 
the  men  who  lived  in  the  town  of  Myszyniecz — which  may 
not  be  the  way  to  spell  it,  but  which  was  as  much  of  it  as  I 
could  disentangle  from  the  cloud  of  "y's"  and  "z's"  which 
they  hurled  at  me.  They  said  that  there  were  many  more 
Jews  in  the  town  than  Poles — almost  fifty  Jews  for  every 
Pole,  but  that  they  never  tried  to  vote  at  elections  for  fear 
the  Poles  might  hurt  them  or  something.  I  asked  if  any- 
body had  been  killed  in  the  town  within  their  memory,  and 
they  said  that  nobody  had  been.  They  simply  didn't  wish 
to  take  a  chance  on  voting.  Needless  to  point  out,  we  have 
had  the  same  situation  in  the  South  for  a  long  time.  One 
of  the  pair,  after  a  moment's  meditation,  remarked  that  he 
had  never  wanted  to  vote,  anyway.  The  rest  of  the  assem- 
blage then  gave  him  the  loud  and  raucous  laugh. 

I  asked  them  the  usual  question  about  fighting  for 
America.  They  agreed  that  they  probably  would,  but  that 
a  great  deal  depended  on  the  way  they  were  treated.  If 
they  liked  the  way  they  were  treated,  they  would ;  but  if  they 
didn't  like  it,  America  would  have  to  win  her  battles  without 
their  help.  When  I  asked  them  what  constituted  good 
treatment,  according  to  their  ideas,  they  refused  to  commit 
themselves.  It  was  agreed  among  them  that  if  they  were 
absolutely  forced  to  decide  between  fighting  for  the  Rus- 
sians, the  Germans,  the  Bolsheviks  and  the  Poles,  they'd 
pick  the  Germans. 


96  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

The  conversation  gave  one  of  the  circle  an  acute  pain. 
"Why  all  this  talk  ?"  he  inquired  pettishly.  "I  don't  go  to 
America  to  fight,  but  to  earn  money."  Under  the  circum- 
stances, his  observation  seemed  to  be  fair  enough. 

I  wish  to  repeat  with  all  possible  emphasis  a  statement 
which  I  have  made  many  times  before,  and  which  a  pro- 
longed investigation  of  post-war  emigration  from  the  Baltic 
to  the  Balkans  has  continued  to  confirm :  The  tremendous 
movement  of  people  from  Europe  to  America  which  has  been 
in  progress  for  the  last  twenty  years,  and  the  even  more  tre- 
mendous one  which  is  in  prospect  unless  immigration  is 
restricted  with  an  iron  hand,  is  purely,  simply  and  solely 
an  economic  movement.  It  is  a  movement  which  must 
not  be  misrepresented  by  sentimentalists  and  near-Americans 
as  being  a  movement  of  oppressed  people  in  search  of  relig- 
ious or  any  other  freedom.  It  must  not  be  misrepresented  as 
a  sentimental  journey  to  long-lost  and  passionately-missed 
relatives.  It  is  a  movement  to  a  better  job:  a  movement 
from  the  worst  of  economic  conditions  to  the  best  of 
economic  conditions :  a  movement  of  people  from  the  lowest 
social  and  economic  layer  of  Europe  to  a  country  where 
European  standards  of  living  are  a  menace  to  workmen, 
health  and  institutions.  Since  this  emigration  is  what  it  is, 
our  lawmakers  not  only  have  every  right  in  the  world  to 
control  it  in  every  respect  and  to  cut  it  down  to  the  irreduc- 
ible minimum,  but  they  also  owe  it  to  their  country  and  to 
their  people  to  see  that  it  is  so  controlled  and  cut  down.  And 
it  might  also  be  mentioned  that  they  owe  it  to  their  children 
to  see  that  the  America  in  which  they  will  have  to  live  shall 
not  be  misruled  and  ruined  by  the  mongrelization  which 
must  inevitably  result  from  the  promiscuous  cross-breeding 
in  America  of  every  race  in  existence. 


THE  EXISTENCE  OF  AN  EMERGENCY      97 

America  is  confronted  by  a  perpetual  emergency  as  long 
as  her  laws  permit  millions  of  non-Nordic  aliens  to  pour 
through  her  sea-gates.  When  this  inpouring  ceases  to  be  an 
emergency,  America  will  have  become  thoroughly  mon- 
grelized,  and  will  no  longer  be  the  America  of  Washington, 
Adams,  Jefferson,  Franklin,  Lincoln,  Emerson,  Lowell, 

Holmes The  climate  and  scenery  of  America  have  no 

more  power  to  counteract  the  inevitable  ruin,  corruption  and 
stagnation  which  follow  cross-breeding  than  the  climate  and 
scenery  of  Central  Italy  had  to  perpetuate  the  genius  of  the 
ancient  Romans  or  than  the  climate  and  scenery  of  the  At- 
tic plain  had  to  perpetuate  the  glories  of  the  ancient 
Athenians.* 


*In  the  light  of  the  above  chapter,  the  two  following  newspaper 
extracts  are  of  marked  interest: 

"Washington,  Oct.  12,  1921 — There  were  425,022  persons  ten  years 
of  age  and  over  in  the  State  of  New  York  in  1920  unable  to  write  in 
any  language,  according  to  figures  made  public  to-day  by  the  Census 
Bureau.  The  percent-age  of  illiteracy  for  ten  years  or  over  was  5.1 
compared  with  5.5  in  1910.  The  native  whites  of  native  parentage 
listed  as  illiterates  numbered  16,150,  those  of  foreign  or  mixed 
parentage  12,256  and  the  foreign  born  389,603.  Less  illiteracy  in  the 
rural  districts  than  in  the  cities  was  shown.  In  New  York  City  there 
were  281,121  illiterates  of  whom  270,788  were  foreign-born  whites. 
The  percentage  was  6.2. 

"The  population  of  the  State  in  1920  was  71.1  per  cent,  native  white, 
and  26.8  foreign-born  white.  Hardly  more  than  one-third  (36.1  per 
cent.)  of  the  white  people  in  the  state  were  native  Americans  born 
of  native  parents,  the  total  native  whites  of  native  parents  being 
3,668,266,  while  the  foreign  element  was  represented  by  2,786,112 
foreign-born  whites,  2,844,083  native  whites  who  had  foreign-born 
parents,  and  873,566  who  had  one  parent  foreign-born,  the  other  being 
native.  The  population  included  198483  negroes  and  8,000  Orientals. 
— The  Boston  Transcript. 

"New  York,  Feb.  13,  1921 — Additional  restrictions  on  immigration 
from  Europe  such  as  Congress  has  been  requested  to  impose  were 
denounced  in  vigorous  terms  by  speakers  at  a  mass  meeting  of  5,000 
persons  in  the  New  York  Hippodrome  this  afternoon.  The  audience 
applauded  the  speakers  frantically.  The  meeting  was  held  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Hebrew  Sheltering  and  Immigrant  Aid  Society."— 
The  Paris  Herald. 


98  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

The  future  of  America  depends  on  the  men  she  breeds. 
God  has  not  given  to  America  a  special  brand  of  ozone  that 
enables  her  to  ride  triumphant  over  the  laws  of  nature ;  and 
the  hazy  dreams  of  sentimentalists  and  the  partisan  desires 
of  alien  societies  are  poor  substitutes  for  straight  thinking 
and  the  inflexible  rules  of  biology. 


The  Remedy 


AN  immigration  law,  to  be  of  any  value  to  the  American 
people,  must  do  certain  things  and  do  them  in  such  a  way 
that  Polish-American  Societies  and  Italian-American 
Societies  and  Hebrew  Sheltering  and  Immigrant  Aid 
Societies  can  not,  by  exerting  an  un-American  but  strongly 
efficacious  influence  on  senators,  representatives,  and  other 
government  officials,  make  jokes  out  of  them  as  they  made 
jokes  out  of  the  provisions  our  immigration  laws  all  through 
1919  and  1920. 

An  efficacious  immigration  law,  in  order  to  be  worth 
more  than  the  conventional  sour  grapes,  must  ( I )  allow  only 
a  fixed  number  of  immigrants  to  enter  America  each  year, 
(2)  accept  as  immigrants  only  those  persons  who  are  essen- 
tial to  the  well-being  of  the  country,  (3)  keep  them  away 
from  the  slums,  and  (4)  get  them  to  that  section  of  the 
country  where  they  are  needed.  There  is  a  simple  solution 
to  this  problem,  evolved  by  a  few  practical  American  immi- 
gration experts  who  have  been  given  a  more  comprehensive 
view  of  immigration  since  the  war  than  any  other  American 
immigration  investigators  or  observers  have  ever  had. 

The  first  step  of  the  solution  calls  for  a  radical  change 
in  the  agencies  which  control  immigration. 

Hitherto  the  regulation  of  immigration  has  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  Department  of  State  and  the  Department  of 

99 


ioo  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Labor.  The  Department  of  State,  through  its  consuls  in 
Europe,  attends  to  investigating  prospective  immigrants 
and  to  placing  on  their  passports  the  vises  which  permit 
them  to  proceed  to  a  United  States  port.  The  Department 
of  Labor  rejects  or  accepts  the  immigrants  at  the  port  of 
entry  and  turns  them  loose  on  the  country. 

The  Department  of  State  has  only  been  in  genuine  con- 
tact with  immigration  since  passport  control  of  immigrants 
came  into  effect  with  the  war.  The  size  and  character  of 
the  immigration  didn't  burst  dazzlingly  on  it  until  1920, 
when  ships  formerly  used  for  transports  and  hospital  ships 
were  put  back  into  passenger  service  and  so  caused  immi- 
grants to  flock  to  consular  offices  for  permission  to  go  to 
America.  The  flood  was  so  sudden  and  so  overwhelming 
that  it  completely  numbed  the  department.  All  through 
1920,  when  liners  filled  with  immigrants  were  lying  in 
rnid-stream  off  Ellis  Island  because  Ellis  Island  was  so 
crammed  with  immigrants  that  it  couldn't  handle  the  rush, 
the  Department  of  State  was  pressing  its  cold  hand  to  its 
hot  brow  and  wondering  what  was  hitting  it.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1920  it  had  recovered  sufficiently  to  realize  that 
immigration  was  the  biggest  thing  it  had  ever  tackled.  In 
the  autumn  it  was  able  to  sit  up  groggily  and  send  one  man 
to  Europe  on  a  hurried  trip  to  look  over  the  immigrant  situa- 
tion. 

The  Consular  Service  of  the  United  States  in  Europe  is 
an  important  adjunct  of  the  Department  of  State.  It  was 
brought  to  a  high  state  of  efficiency  during  the  war,  and 
was  in  a  position  to  be  of  inestimable  value  to  American 
business  men  and  to  the  country  at  large  after  the  war.  In 
1920,  because  of  the  enormous  amount  of  vise  work  which 
had  to  be  done  in  practically  every  consulate,  the  United 


THE  REMEDY  101 

States  Consular  Service  in  Europe  had  degenerated  into  an 
organization  which  was  merely  doing  the  dirty  work  for  the 
Department  of  Labor.  Consular  offices  in  Europe  had 
become  places  to  be  shunned  by  American  business  men  in 
search  of  information  or  assistance.  Consular  desks  were 
piled  high  with  letters  from  American  business  men  which 
the  consuls  could  find  no  time  to  answer.  Just  before  the 
emergency  immigration  law  went  into  effect  in  the  summer 
of  1921,  the  American  consulate  in  Prague,  Czecho- 
slovakia, was  so  loaded  with  vise  work  that  practically  all 
other  work  had  been  suspended;  in  the  Bucharest  consulate 
the  office  files  and  accounts  were  months  out  of  date  and 
no  commercial  work  whatever  was  being  done;  in  the 
Athens  consulate  the  vise  work  had  almost  completely 
wrecked  the  getting  out  of  commercial  and  crop  reports; 
in  Danzig  the  consulate  had  been  so  busy  with  vises  that 
the  gathering  of  commercial  reports  had  been  impossible; 
in  Zagreb,  Jugo-Slavia,  the  immigrants  haunted  the  con- 
sulate in  such  numbers  that  only  the  absolutely  necessary 
notarial  work  could  be  done  in  addition  to  the  vise  work; 
in  Warsaw  at  a  time  when  Poland  was  making  important 
contracts  with  foreign  countries,  so  that  all  the  consulates 
should  have  been  devoting  themselves  to  gathering  business 
information,  the  American  consulate  had  a  staff  of  fifty- 
three  persons,  and  forty-nine  of  the  fifty-three  were  work- 
ing exclusively  on  vises ;  in  Vienna  no  work  other  than  vise 
work  could  be  done  unless  the  entire  consulate  staff  worked 
at  night  and  on  Sundays.  The  staffs  couldn't  be  increased 
because  the  Congressional ,  appropriation  for  the  Consular 
Service  had  been  entirely  used  up. 

The  Department  of  Labor  ostensibly  is  in  charge  of 
immigration.    The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  the  Department 


102  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

of  Labor,  after  years  of  association  with  the  subject,  knows 
no  more  about  immigration — except  after  the  arrival  of  im- 
migrants in  American  ports — than  it  knows  about  the  habits 
of  the  Viviparous  Blenny  or  the  gambling  systems  in  vogue 
at  Monte  Carlo.  The  Department  of  Labor  has  to  do  with 
labor;  and  immigration,  as  constituted  in  the  present  age, 
has  about  as  much  in  common  with  labor  as  could  be  placed 
on  the  point  of  a  No.  10  needle.  Though  the  Department  of 
Labor  was  ostensibly  in  charge  of  immigration  for  many 
years,  it  made  no  effort  to  acquaint  itself  with  the  changes 
in  immigration  movements  until  it  sent  the  Commissioner 
General  of  Immigration  aboard  on  a  flying  trip  as  late  as 
December,  1920.  It  has  never  made  any  effective  effort  to 
remedy  the  glaring  and  obvious  evils  which  resulted  from 
immigration.  Labor,  as  a  whole,  is  seldom  right  in  its  posi- 
tions. Labor  has  been  strongly  anti-immigrant  for  purely 
selfish  reasons — not  from  any  idea  of  bettering  the  nation, 
but  because  it  wanted  less  cheap  competition — and  has  hap- 
pened to  take  the  right  position.  The  Department  of  Labor, 
under  the  Wilson  administration,  consistently  refused  to 
place  a  broad  construction  on  the  immigration  laws,  and  so 
bungled  matters  that  great  numbers  of  people  who  should 
have  been  kept  out  by  our  immigration  laws  were  allowed 
to  pass  freely  into  America.  This  is  liable  to  happen  under 
any  administration.  There  is  no  more  reason  for  the 
Department  of  Labor  to  have  jurisdiction  over  immigration 
than  there  is  for  a  Bureau  of  Fisheries  to  have  control  of  the 
Prohibition  Enforcement  laws. 

It  is  generally  conceded  by  immigration  authorities  that 
Italy,  of  all  the  nations,  has  the  best  emigration  laws,  and 
has  devoted  more  time  and  thought  to  the  subject  of  emigra- 
tion than  all  the  other  nations  put  together.  Italy  has  placed 


THE  REMEDY  103 

her  Bureau  of  Emigration  under  the  Foreign  Office  (which 
corresponds  to  our  State  Department) ;  for  it  is  a  matter 
which  has  to  do  with  international  relations.  The  idea  of  plac- 
ing her  emigration  bureau  under  the  Department  of  Labor 
would  strike  Italy  as  an  absurdity,  because  she  has  studied 
the  subject  and  knows  that  it  is  more  than  an  internal  matter. 
Italy,  however,  is  in  a  different  position  from  the  United 
States  as  regards  immigration.  The  movement  of  the 
Italian  people  is,  to  all  extents,  entirely  outward;  whereas 
with  the  United  States  it  is  almost  entirely  the  incoming 
masses  of  foreigners  that  are  causing  all  the  trouble.  The 
United  States  has  nearly  reached  the  end  of  her  immigration 
rope,  and  has  got  to  stop  immigration,  even  though  our  more 
recent  citizens  of  alien  descent  protest  bitterly  against  the 
stopping.  If  the  Bureau  of  Immigration  were  under  the 
Department  of  State — which  corresponds  to  the  Italian 
Foreign  Office — and  the  machinery  for  stopping  immigra- 
tion were  regulated  by  consuls  or  other  State  Department 
employees,  there  would  be  constant  friction  between  foreign 
governments  and  our  State  Department  representatives  in 
Europe.  Since  our  State  Department  representatives  are  in 
Europe  to  get  various  forms  of  information  for  the  United 
States,  their  sources  of  information  would  be  gradually 
closed  to  them,  and  their  ultimate  fate  would  be  to  sit 
stupidly  around  their  embassies  and  consulates  and  wait  for 
the  natives  of  the  country  in  which  they  were  sitting  to  vent 
their  displeasure  at  America  by  heaving  a  few  bombs 
through  their  windows  or  taking  a  few  pot  shots  at  them — 
as  the  Italians  did  to  our  consul  in  Trieste  during  the  latter 
part  of  1920,  or  as  the  Socialists  of  various  countries  did  to 
various  diplomatic  and  consular  officials  late  in  1921  over 
the  Sacco-Vanzetti  case. 


104  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

European  governments  can  not  understand  that  America 
has  the  right  to  safeguard  herself  against  undesirable  immi- 
gration by  any  means  she  chooses  to  employ.  America  raises 
the  price  of  a  vise  in  order  to  keep  out  a  few  immigrants : 
European  countries — especially  the  new  and  fat-headed 
ones — promptly  raise  the  price  of  their  vises  to  Americans 
alone  as  a  retaliatory  measure.  America  wants  no  more 
shoals  of  foreigners  cramming  her  slums,  lowering  her 
standards  of  living,  mongrelizing  her  population  and  sowing 
the  seeds  of  European  instability,  unrest  and  national  hatred 
among  her  population.  Yet  the  Europeans  insist  on  com- 
ing; fight  to  come ;  lie  and  steal  and  forge  in  order  to  come. 
Their  idea  in  coming  is  always  to  take  something  from 
America :  never  to  do  anything  for  America.  At  the  same 
time  the  governments  of  European  countries  are  urging  and 
praying  that  Americans  will  come  to  their  countries,  be- 
cause a  traveling  American  makes  many  purchases  and  is  a 
commercial  asset  to  the  country  he  is  in.  America  makes  a 
flat  rate  for  all  foreigners  and  wishes  that  most  of  them 
would  stay  at  home:  Europe  discriminates  against  Ameri- 
cans, yet  wants  them  to  come  there  and  spend  their  money. 
That  shows  their  lack  of  understanding  of  the  American 
position  concerning  immigration,  and  why  the  Department 
of  State  shouldn't  be  handicapped  by  being  put  in  charge 
of  it. 

Immigration  is  too  big  and  important  a  matter  to  the 
people  of  America  to  be  controlled  completely  either  by  the 
Department  of  Labor  or  the  Department  of  State.  As  long 
as  these  two  Departments  have  control  of  immigration,  it 
will  continue  to  be  messed  up  by  politics  and  by  the  hopeless 
incompetency  of  political  appointees  whose  chief  knowledge 
of  the  immigration  problem  consists  of  the  belief  that  all 


THE  REMEDY  105 

male  immigrants  wear  brown  corduroy  trousers  and  gold 
earrings  and  rub  garlic  in  their  hair. 

Immigration  is  a  matter  which,  to  be  properly  handled, 
should  be  supervised  and  controlled  by  a  federal  commis- 
sion of  five  or  seven  men  who  have  either  made  a  careful 
study  of  immigration  or  who  possess  unusual  qualifications 
for  membership  in  such  a  commission.  It  should  be  the  same 
sort  of  organization  as  the  Federal  Reserve  Board  and  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  and  it  should  be  entirely 
removed  from  politics.  If  politics  were  allowed  to  enter 
into  it,  it  would  be  subjected  to  the  same  apparently  irresist- 
ible pressure  to  which  our  senators  and  congressmen  were 
being  subjected  in  1920  and  1921  by  so  many  near- Ameri- 
cans, particularly  by  Jews.  The  commission  might,  for 
example,  be  appointed  by  the  president  with  the  advice  and 
consent  of  the  Senate;  but,  however  it  were  selected,  it 
should  be  non-political. 

The  proper  immigration  law,  then,  would  create  a  fed- 
eral commission  to  have  entire  and  unhampered  control  of 
the  administration  of  the  law;  and  the  law  would  clearly 
define  the  commission's  duties. 

Now  some  of  the  persons  who  have  approved  this 
scheme  for  restricting  and  regulating  immigration  believe 
that  all  immigration  to  the  United  States  should  be  stopped 
for  a  term  of  years.  They  believe  in  absolutely  stopping: 
not  in  the  imitation  and  futile  "stopping"  which  results 
from  saying  that  an  immigrant  must  be  able  to  read  his  own 
rtame  and  the  inscription  on  a  can  of  baked  beans  when 
printed  in  one  of  the  fifty-seven  hundred  existing  languages, 
dialects  and  lingoes,  including  the  Choctaw  and  the  Tierra 
del  Fuegan.  None  the  less,  these  persons  also  recognize 
that  absolute  stoppage  of  immigration  would  be  next  to 


106  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

impossible  because  of  the  tremendous  pressure  which  would 
at  once  be  brought  to  bear  on  our  legislators  by  Americans 
of  alien  descent.  They  also  realize  that  whatever  so-called 
"absolute  stoppage"  might  be  secured  would  be  only  for  a 
short  term  of  years — one  or  two  or  five  years,  and  that  at 
the  end  of  that  time  America  would  again  be  confronted  by 
the  same  old  immigration  problem,  and  by  the  same  old 
European  influences  against  any  restriction  of  immigration. 

Even  the  extreme  anti-immigrationist  Americans  in 
Europe,  therefore,  have  come  to  realize  that  the  only  effec- 
tive anti-immigration  laws  are  those  which  let  in  certain 
people  who  can  be  of  help  to  America.  They  know  that  a 
law  which  says  loudly  "Nobody  shall  come  in,"  and  then 
adds  in  a  whisper  "except  relatives  and  those  who  signify 
their  intentions  of  becoming  citizens,"  is  almost  no  law  at 
all.  That  is  why  even  the  extremists  favor  a  law  which 
shall  define  the  duties  of  the  proposed  Federal  Immigrant 
Commission  in  the  following  manner: 

A  certain  number  of  laborers,  skilled  and  unskilled, 
shall  be  permitted  to  immigrate  to  America  from  foreign 
countries  during  each  year.  This  number  shall  be  restricted 
to  (say)  one  hundred  thousand  per  year,  shall  be  selected 
at  the  source  by  consular  officers  of  the  United  States,  and 
distributed  in  America  by  employees  of  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Immigration. 

During  the  first  year  when  this  law  is  operative, 
fifty  thousand  near  relatives  of  naturalized  Americans 
shall  be  allowed  to  enter;  and  during  succeeding  years  not 
more  than  twenty  thousand  near  relatives  each  year  shall  be 
permitted  to  enter  the  country. 

The  Federal  Immigration  Commission,  sitting  contin- 
ually, shall  supervise  the  selection  at  the  source  of  the  one 


THE  REMEDY  107 

hundred  thousand  laborers,  and  shall  make  sure  that  they 
are  chiefly  required  to  fill  certain  national  necessities. 

They  will  make  sure  after  this  fashion : 

Every  portion  of  the  United  States,  from  time  to  time, 
suffers  from  the  lack  of  certain  workers.  There  are  various 
sorts  of  intensive  farming  which  are  best  performed  by 
farm  laborers  from  sections  of  Italy.  There  are  other  sorts 
which  are  best  performed  by  laborers  from  a  specific  section 
of  Hungary.  Labor  shortage  is  constantly  occurring,  let 
us  say,  in  the  diamond-cutting  industry,  or  among  the 
wooden  nutmeg  carvers  or  the  macaroni-raisers,  or  in  the 
kitchens  of  large  numbers  of  housewives. 

The  Federal  Immigration  Commission  will  employ  a 
force  of  statisticians.  When  a  shortage  occurs  in  any  trade, 
profession  or  calling,  the  persons  qualified  to  take  action 
in  the  matter  will  notify  the  Federal  Immigration  Commis- 
sion of  the  shortage  and  request  that  a  certain  number  of 
workers  of  the  type  required  be  admitted  to  the  country. 

For  example,  a  call  might  come  to  the  Federal  Immigra- 
tion Commission  from  the  Michigan  copper  mining  district 
stating  that  five  thousand  skilled  miners  were  required  in 
order  that  the  output  of  the  mines  might  be  brought  to  a 
specified  point,  that  these  miners  could  not  at  the  present 
time  be  obtained  in  the  United  States,  and  that  the  best  type 
of  labor  suited  to  their  ne"eds  had  hitherto  come  from  a  small 
province  in  Hungary. 

Having  received  this  call,  the  commission  would  call  in 
its  statisticians,  find  out  whether  the  statements  of  the 
Michigan  copper  mines  are  true,  and  whether  the  immigra- 
tion quota  for  the  year  will  permit  of  five  thousand  workers 
being  allowed  to  come  to  America  for  this  purpose. 

If  so,  the  commission  would  issue  a  departmental  order 


io8  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

stating  that  five  thousand  miners  were  needed  from  a  cer- 
tain district  in  Hungary  to  work  in  the  Michigan  copper 
mines.  A  copy  of  this  order  would  go  to  the  Department 
of  Labor  for  the  Bureau  of  Immigration  so  that  immigra- 
tion inspectors  at  the  port  of  entry  may  be  informed. 
Another  copy  would  go  to  the  Department  of  State  for  dis- 
tribution to  the  American  consulate  in  or  nearest  to  the  dis- 
trict from  which  laborers  are  wanted.  The  consul  would 
publish  his  requirements  in  the  local  newspapers.  On  the 
following  day  the  consulate  would  be  swamped  with  appli- 
cants. 

The  applicants  would  be  required,  outside  of  satisfying 
the  health  and  literacy  tests,  to  show  proof  that  they  were 
laborers  of  the  sort  required  and  to  agree  to  go  to  a  specified 
section  of  the  United  States  to  do  the  sort  of  work  to  which 
they  are  accustomed.  If  a  man  were  married  and  wished  to 
take  his  wife,  he  could  do  it,  but  each  wife  would  count  as 
a  unit  in  the  required  five  thousand.  Thus,  if  each  accepted 
laborer  took  his  wife,  the  Michigan  mines  would  get  twenty- 
five  hundred  men  instead  of  five  thousand. 

Within  six  or  eight  weeks  after  the  Federal  Immigration 
Commission  sends  out  its  departmental  order,  the  workmen 
would  be  delivered  to  the  United  States.  The  machinery 
exists,  perfected  in  all  details  by  the  Bureau  of  Immigration, 
for  shipping  immigrants  to  different  points  throughout  the 
country;  so  that  they  will  be  delivered  at  the  Michigan 
mines  as  rapidly  as  trains  can  make  the  trip. 

Having  arrived  there,  they  should  be  obliged  to  report 
each  week  at  the  county  court-house,  which  is  usually  the 
place  where  immigrants  are  naturalized.  Thus  the  author- 
ities would  keep  track  of  them  and  they  would  become  famil- 
iar with  our  naturalization  machinery  at  the  same  time. 


All  hungry,  all  ragged,  all  paupers,  and  all  with  relatives  in  America. 


A  Polish  cradle.  It  is  generally  one  piece  of  wood  hewn  from  a  log, 
and  is  used  to  rock  the  baby,  feed  the  horses,  wash  clothes  and 
make  bread. 


jjj^-^^jjjmjjjj&gji 


o 

-3    X 


£  -a 


5  15 


H 


THE  REMEDY  109 

Since  these  laborers  had  agreed  to  work  at  a  certain 
task,  and  since  they  had  been  delivered  to  the  spot  where 
the  work  exists,  it  is  highly  probable  that  they  would  do  the 
work  required  of  them. 

If  farm-workers  were  wanted  in  Massachusetts  and 
Indiana  and  Georgia  and  California  and  North  Dakota,  the 
same  system  would  be  used.  Consuls  would  select  farm- 
workers from  Italy  and  Poland  and  Slovakia  and  farming 
districts  in  other  countries,  selecting  only  experienced  farm- 
ers who  agree  to  go  to  the  section  of  the  country  where  they 
are  needed,  and  to  work  as  farm-laborers.  The  same  thing 
holds  true  of  diamond-cutters  or  nutmeg-carvers  or  cooks  or 
servant  girls  or  macaroni-raisers. 

Nobody,  under  this  scheme  of  immigration,  would  be 
permitted  to  emigrate  to  America  except  those  who  were 
particularly  qualified  to  fill  particular  positions;  and  if 
there  were  a  surplus  of  labor,  as  there  was  in  1921,  when 
five  million  persons  were  out  of  work  in  America,  then  no 
immigration  at  all  would  be  permitted. 

Hitherto  there  has  been  a  glut  of  immigrants  capable  of 
filling  all  sorts  of  positions,  and  a  tremendous  glut  of  immi- 
grants who  were  utterly  incapable  of  filling  any  positions 
at  all ;  but  under  our  existiftg  immigration  laws  and  under 
all  other  immigration  laws  under  consideration  it  is  impos- 
sible to  get  the  immigrant  to  go  where  he  is  needed.  Thou- 
sands of  skilled  Italian  and  Polish  and  Slovak  farmers  have 
been  pouring  into  America  each  year;  but  they  have  never 
gone  to  the  farms  that  need  them.  They  have  slipped  into 
the  slums  and  foreign  settlements  where  they  have  stub- 
bornly retained  the  languages,  the  customs  and  the  ideas  of 
Europe,  and  formed  a  perpetual  breeding-place  for  discon- 
tent, sedition  and  even  anarchy.  The  tremendous  numbers 


no  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

which  have  poured  in — well  over  one  million  a  year  during 
the  ten  years  before  the  war — as  well  as  the  slums  which 
they  formed,  constituted  the  worst  menace  which  America 
has  ever  faced. 

To  make  sure,  however,  that  newcomers  shall  not  work 
into  the  slums,  the  first  departmental  order  of  the  Federal 
Immigration  Commission  might  reasonably  be  that  no 
unskilled  labor  would  be  permitted  to  come  to  America  to 
settle  in  New  York,  Chicago,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Pitts- 
burgh, Detroit,  Cleveland,  or  any  other  large  city  with  an 
overabundance  of  foreign  slums.  Such  an  order  can  easily 
be  enforced  by  the  close  supervision  of  the  immigrants  for 
which  the  above  plans  call.  Immigrants  who  do  not  live 
up  to  pre-immigration  agreements  would  be  deported. 

By  adopting  such  a  plan,  America  would  automatically 
eliminate  immigrants  who  would  be  parasites  on  the  com- 
munity. There  are  sections  of  Europe  to-day  which  are 
sending  to  America  thousands  upon  thousands  of  unskilled 
workmen  whose  only  means  of  livelihood  for  centuries  has 
been  to  engage  in  some  infinitesimal  or  underhanded  busi- 
ness and  to  subsist  in  the  barest  manner  by  the  exploitation 
of  their  neighbors  and  of  one  another.  In  America  they 
exist  in  the  same  way,  producing  nothing  new,  aiding  not  at 
all  to  make  America  better  or  richer,  but  always  struggling 
to  improve  their  own  lot  at  the  expense  of  others.  It  is 
usually  the  cry  of  these  people  that  they  are  being  perse- 
cuted and  they  are  seeking  political  and  religious  freedom. 
It  is  their  cry  in  whatever  country  they  live  in;  and  it  has 
been  their  cry  always.  The  cry  is  not  true.  Never  in  the 
course  of  their  existence  have  these  people  known  any  perse- 
cution to  compare  in  the  faintest  degree  with  that  which  was 
endured,  for  example,  by  the  French  Protestants  and  the 


THE  REMEDY  in 

Irish  Catholics;  and  they  seek,  not  religious  and  political 
freedom,  but  more  money. 

By  adopting  such  a  plan,  America  could,  if  she  wished, 
tear  up  and  throw  away  all  the  laws  which  have  had  to  be 
enacted  against  Japanese  and  Chinese  immigration.  Under 
this  plan,  such  laws  would  be  unnecessary;  and  by  doing 
away  with  them,  America  could  remove  a  source  of  friction 
which  some  day  will  unquestionably  prove  dangerous. 

There  will  be,  as  I  have  said  before,  tremendous  opposi- 
tion to  any  such  law  on  the  part  of  many  foreign-American 
societies,  and  especially  from  the  Hebrew  Sheltering  and 
Immigrant  Aid  Society  and  other  Hebrew  organizations. 
Over  against  their  opinions  stands  the  opinion  of  every 
American  student  of  immigration  in  Europe,  and  of  thou- 
sands of  competent  men  in  America  who  have  had  the 
opportunity  to  see  the  incoming  flood  of  immigration,  to  the 
effect  that  the  question  of  immigration  is  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  for  the  American  people. 

As  an  emergency  measure  to  remedy  the  evils  of  immi- 
gration, the  so-called  three  per  cent,  law  was  put  into  effect 
on  June  3,  1921. 

Generally  speaking,  this  temporary  percentage  law  was 
a  pretty  good  law.  It  was  pretty  good  because  it  cut  down 
the  number  of  immigrants.  It  was  an  unscientific  law  and 
an  unfair  law  and  a  lazy  man's  law;  but  it  cut  down  the 
numbers  and  therefore  it  was  good.  It  was  no  more  ad- 
justed to  the  needs  of  America  than  a  pint  of  peanuts  is 
adjusted  to  assuaging  the  hunger  of  a  blood-sweating 
behemoth  of  Holy  Writ :  it  was  no  more  fitted  to  deal  with 
the  immigration  problem  than  a  pair  of  sugar-tongs  is 
fitted  to  handle  a  barge-load  of  cannel-coal.  But  it  gave 
America  somewhat  less  of  a  bad  thing  than  she  was  getting 


112  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

> 

before  it  went  into  effect ;  and  since  a  little  poison  is  prefer- 
able to  a  lot  of  poison,  the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law  was  infi- 
nitely preferable  to  any  other  immigration  law  that  America 
had  ever  put  in  force. 

The  Three  Per  Cent.  Law,  when  stripped  to  the  bone, 
provided  that  the  number  of  aliens  of  any  nationality  that 
could  be  admitted  to  the  United  States  in  any  fiscal  year 
should  be  limited  to  three  per  cent,  of  the  number  of  for- 
eign-born persons  of  such  nationality  resident  in  the  United 
States  as  determined  by  the  1910  census.  Certain  people 
didn't  count,  however — such  people  as  foreign  government 
officials  and  their  families  and  employees,  aliens  in  transit 
through  the  United  States,  tourists,  aliens  from  countries 
which  have  special  immigration  treaties  with  the  United 
States,  aliens  who  have  lived  for  one  year  prior  to  their  ad- 
mission in  Canada,  Newfoundland,  Mexico,  Central 
America  or  South  America,  and  aliens  under  the  age  of 
eighteen  who  are  children  of  American  citizens.  In  no 
month  could  more  than  twenty  per  cent,  of  a  country's 
admissible  quota  of  immigrants  be  admitted  to  the  United 
States,  except  in  the  cases  of  actors,  artists,  lecturers,  sing- 
ers, nurses,  clergymen  of  any  denomination,  professors, 
members  of  the  learned  professions  or  domestic  servants. 
These  could  always  come  in,  even  though  the  month's  or 
the  year's  quota  might  have  been  exhausted. 

The  Three  Per  Cent.  Law,  in  the  first  four  months  of 
operation  resulted  in  the  following  beneficial  change : 

During  the  months  of  July,  August,  September  and 
October,  1921,  thirty-four  per  cent,  or  one- third,  of  all 
European  immigration  came  from  the  Nordic  peoples  of  the 
north  and  west  of  Europe.  Prior  to  1880,  practically  all 
the  immigration  in  the  United  States  was  Nordic  in  char- 


THE  REMEDY  113 

acter.  After  1880  the  Nordic  immigration  was  over- 
whelmed by  the  backward,  unassimilatable,  undesirable  im- 
migration from  Eastern  and  Southern  Europe;  and  during 
the  months  of  Jury,  August,  September  and  October,  1913, 
which  was  the  last  normal  year  of  unrestricted  immigration, 
only  fifteen  per  cent,  of  our  immigrants  came  from  the 
Nordic  peoples  of  the  north  and  west  of  Europe.  Conse- 
quently the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law,  in  the  first  four  months 
of  operation,  swung  the  tide  of  immigration  back  toward 
the  Nordic  stock  which  founded,  developed  and  wrote  the 
laws  of  this  country. 

It  is  not  particularly  pleasant  to  continue  to  harp  on 
the  necessity  of  keeping  the  United  States  a  nation  of  Nor- 
dics; for  there  are  always  a  large  number  of  sentimentally 
inclined  readers,  whose  belief  in  the  whimsical  fairy-tale  of 
the  melting  pot  is  stronger  than  their  common  sense,  who 
write  hectic  and  vitriolic  replies  to  any  remarks  on  the 
respective  merits  of  a  continued  Nordic  strain  of  people 
and  a  mixed  strain.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  gather 
from  the  letters  that  frequently  reach  me  on  this  subject, 
no  mention  should  be  made  of  racial  differences  because 
all  people  are  equal  in  the  eyes  of  St.  Peter.  This  is  proba- 
bly true;  and  everybody  will  unquestionably  be  delighted 
if  it  is.  Here  on  earth,  however,  there  are  certain  biological 
laws  which  govern  the  crossing  of  different  breeds,  whether 
the  breeds  be  dogs  or  horses  or  men.  If  an  otter  hound  is 
crossed  with  a  Welsh  terrier,  the  result  is  a  mongrel.  But 
if  other  otter  hounds  are  crossed  with  other  Welsh  ter- 
riers, and  the  results  of  these  crossings  are  mated  in  turn, 
the  result  is  an  Airedale,  which  is  a  very  excellent  dog. 
Excellent  results  can  usually  be  obtained  from  cross-breed- 
ing followed  by  inbreeding.  But  the  only  results  that  can 


H4  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ever  be  obtained  from  promiscuous  and  continued  cross- 
breeding is  mongrelization ;  and  a  mongrel — in  spite  of  the 
excellence  of  the  stock  from  which  he  may  have  sprung — 
is  a  total  loss.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  humans.  A  mon- 
grelized  race  of  people  is  incapable  of  producing  great  ar- 
tists or  authors  or  statesmen  or  poets  or  architects  or 
sculptors,  or  explorers  or  warriors.  A  mongrelized  race  sinks 
to  the  dead  level  of  mediocrity.  Its  government  becomes 
corrupt,  its  art  and  its  literature  become  degenerate  and  silly, 
its  judiciary  becomes  venal,  its  public  and  its  private  morals 
become  depraved.  Nothing  is  left  to  it  but  the  sharpness, 
the  trickiness  and  the  cunning  of  its  unscrupulous  traders 
and  an  exalted  opinion  of  its  own  importance,  based  on  the 
records  of  the  pure  but  vanished  race  which  it  supplanted. 
These  facts  should  be  of  considerable  interest  to  a  great 
many  citizens  of  the  United  States ;  for  so  many  millions  of 
non-Nordic  aliens  have  poured  into  this  country  since  1880 
that  in  several  of  America's  largest  cities  the  foreign-born 
and  the  children  of  foreign-born  far  out-number  the  native 
Americans.  The  inevitable  result  of  such  a  state  of  affairs, 
unless  it  is  checked  at  once  and  forever,  is  mongrelization; 
and  many  of  America's  large  cities  are  already  displaying 
all  the  ear-marks  of  mongrelization.  There  are  still  many 
millions  of  good  Americans  who  hold,  in  the  innocence  of 
their  mistaken  belief  in  the  equality  of  mankind,  that  the 
person  who  believes  in  race  purity  is  a  snob;  but  before 
many  years  have  gone  by,  he  will  be  a  benighted  American 
who  doesn't  know  that  race  purity  is  the  prime  essential  for 
the  well-being  of  his  children  and  the  continued  existence 
of  the  things  that  made  his  country  great. 

There  are  two  bad  features  of  the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law. 
One  is  the  way  in  which  it  still  permits  thousands  upon  thou- 


THE  REMEDY  115 

sands  of  pauper  and  parasitic  aliens  to  be  dumped  on  our 
shores  for  no  reason  except  their  desire  to  earn  more  money 
and  their  country's  desire  to  be  rid  of  them.  The  other  is 
the  extreme  unfairness  of  the  law  in  failing  to  provide 
separate  quotas  for  countries  whose  population  is  divided 
into  distinct  racial  groups. 

Let  us  look,  for  example,  at  the  situation  that  exists 
in  such  countries  as  Turkey  and  Rumania  and  Poland  and 
Czecho-Slovakia  and — when  it  shall  be  opened  up — Russia. 
Under  the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law,  quotas  are  assigned  to  the 
"Country  or  Place  of  Birth"  of  the  immigrants.  The  word 
"country"  means  next  to  nothing  in  Eastern  Europe ;  for  a 
very  large  percentage  of  Eastern  Europeans  are  subjected 
to  the  government  of  races  that  they  hate  and  despise.  The 
Jews  and  the  Hungarians  who  are  included  in  Rumania's 
borders  invariably  scream  with  indignation  if  they  are 
classed  as  Rumanians.  Similarly,  the  Jews  of  Poland  abso- 
lutely refuse  to  allow  themselves  to  be  classed  as  Poles. 
Yet  the  quota  allotted  to  Rumania  and  Poland  is  computed 
on  the  number  of  Rumanians  and  Poles  in  America,  but 
used  almost  entirely  by  Jews. 

July  and  August,  1921,  saw  the  following  people  ad- 
mitted to  America,  according  to  the  records  of  the  Bureau 
of  Immigration,  as  coming  from  Turkey:  668  Armenians, 
314  Syrians,  210  Hebrews,  175  Greeks  and  77  other  races 
— and  a  few  Turks  among  them,  no  doubt.  The  Turks 
also  find  little  nourishment  in  such  a  situation.  The  only 
fair  way  to  apportion  Turkey's  quota  is  on  a  percentage 
basis:  if  the  population  of  Turkey  is  twenty  per  cent.  Ar- 
menian and  ten  per  cent.  Greek,  and  so  on,  then  let  twenty 
per  cent,  of  Turkey's  quota  be  Armenian  and  ten  per  cent. 
Greek,  and  no  more. 


n6  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Rumania's  admissible  quota  for  1921  was  7,414.  Dur- 
ing July  and  August,  1921,  there  were  2,104  persons  ad- 
mitted for  Rumania.  Of  this  number,  137  were  Magyars, 
226  were  Germans,  271  were  Rumanians,  1,411  were  Jews 
and  59  were  scattered  nationalities.  Although  the  Jews  in 
Rumania  are  greatly  in  the  minority  as  compared  with 
the  Rumanians,  they  are  given  more  opportunities  to  leave 
the  country  by  the  Rumanian  government  and  so  leave  in 
greater  numbers  than  the  other  races  which  inhabit  Ru- 
mania. The  Rumanians,  by  comparison,  don't  have  a  look- 
in  and  never  will  until  the  quota  is  divided  among  the  races 
on  a  percentage  basis. 

The  quota  for  Poland  for  1921-22  was  25,800.  Yet 
during  July  and  August,  2,088  Poles  came  to  America  and 
8,471  Jews,  or  four  Jews  for  every  Pole.  The  quota  for 
Poland  was  exhausted  in  December,  1921,  and  the  Poles 
were  moaning  bitterly  because  they  hadn't  been  given  a 
square  deal.  Nor  had  they;  for  the  population  of  Poland 
is  something  like  17,000,000  Poles  and  3,000,000  Jews.  If 
a  percentage  law  is  to  apply  to  every  one  alike,  then  the 
quota  for  Poland  should  be  adjusted  so  that  seventeen- 
twentieths  of  it  is  made  up  of  Poles  and  three-twentieths  of 
Hebrews. 

The  Czecho-Slovak  quota  should  be  divided  fairly  among 
the  Slovaks,  the  Czechs,  the  Jews,  the  Magyars,  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  Croats  who  spend  so  much  time  bickering  with 
each  other  in  that  uneasy  country ;  while  the  Russian  quota 
of  34,247,  unless  it  is  properly  apportioned  between  the 
Russians,  the  Lithuanians  and  the  Jews,  will  be  almost  en- 
tirely filled  by  Jews  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Russians 
outnumber  them  by  more  than  fifty  to  one.  The  Jews, 
because  of  the  remarkably  excellent  organization  of  the 


THE  REMEDY  117 

Hebrew  Immigrant  Aid  Society,  can  secure  the  money,  the 
passports,  the  vises  and  the  steamship  tickets  to  get  to 
America  before  the  Russians  have  found  out  where  to  go  to 
get  their  passports.  So  in  this  case  a  Three  Per  Cent.  Law 
operates  as  a  Twenty  Per  Cent.  Law  for  the  Jews  and  a 
Tenth  of  One  Per  Cent.  Law  for  the  Russians.  And  a 
person  must  have  badly  warped  eyesight  to  detect  any 
signs  of  fairness  in  such  arrangements. 

Probably  the  worst  feature  of  any  percentage  law,  un- 
less its  percentage  quotas  are  figured  on  races  instead  of  on 
nationalities,  is  the  large  number  of  Russian  Jews,  Polish 
Jews  and  Rumanian  Jews  which  it  permits  to  enter  the 
country.  The  undesirability  of  these  peculiar  people  has 
been  emphasized  in  preceding  chapters.  Their  ruthlessness 
and  underhandedness  in  the  pursuit  of  money  is  brought 
with  them  to  America;  and  constant  thorns  in  the  flesh  of 
American  representatives  in  European  countries  are  the 
sharp  practises  and  the  unreliability  of  many  Jewish-Ameri- 
can business  firms.  Twenty  years  ago  the  American  busi- 
ness man  in  Europe  would  often  drive  a  hard  bargain;  but 
he  had  the  universal  reputation  of  being  honest,  square  and 
absolutely  reliable.  To-day,  in  many  parts  of  Europe,  the 
unreliability  of  American  business  firms  is  notorious — and 
almost  without  exception  the  firms  responsible  for  this  repu- 
tation are  composed  of  Jewish  immigrants  from  Russia  and 
Poland.  An  examination  of  the  correspondence  of  some 
American  legations  in  Europe  would  reveal  the  fact  that  a 
good  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  correspondence  has  to  be  written 
for  the  purpose  of  straightening  out  the  tangles  caused  by 
the  shady  dealings  of  Jews  who  are  traveling  on  American 
passports. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  moreover,  that  the  Jews  from 


u8  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Russia,  Poland  and  nearly  all  of  Southeastern  Europe  are 
not  Europeans:  they  are  Asiatics  and  in  part,  at  least, 
Mongoloids.  California  long  ago  realized  the  importance 
of  barring  Mongoloids  from  white  territory ;  but  while  they 
are  barred  in  the  West,  they  pour  in  by  millions  in  the  East. 
There  will  be,  of  course,  many  well-intentioned  persons  to 
deny  that  the  Russian  and  Polish  Jews  have  Mongoloid 
blood  in  them.  This  fact,  however,  may  readily  be  con- 
firmed in  that  section  of  the  Jewish  Encyclopedia  dealing 
with  the  Chazars.  The  Jewish  Encyclopedia  states  that  the 
Chazars  were  "people  of  Turkish  origin  whose  life  and  his- 
tory are  interwoven  with  the  very  beginnings  of  the  history 
of  the  Jews  of  Russia." 

The  Chazars,  briefly,  occupied  nearly  all  of  South  Rus- 
sia long  before  the  foundation  of  the  Russian  monarchy  by 
the  Varangians  in  the  year  855.  The  Byzantine  Empire  and 
the  Calif  of  the  Ishmaelites  sent  envoys  and  sages  to  King 
Bulan  of  the  Chazars  either  in  the  year  620  or  740  in  order 
to  convert  him  to  their  religions.  Bulan,  on  his  own  ac- 
count, also  invited  the  wise  men  of  Israel  to  put  in  a  bid. 
This  they  did.  King  Bulan  then  examined  the  envoys 
separately,  and  asked  each  one  which  religion  he  considered 
to  be  the  next  best  to  his  own.  The  Mohammedans  said 
that  the  Jewish  religion  was  the  next  best.  The  Christians 
said  the  same  thing.  Bulan  therefore  adopted  the  Jewish 
religion  for  the  kingdom  of  the  Chazars,  and  the  people 
eventually  adopted  it  as  well.  The  kingdom  of  the 
Chazars  was  finally  disrupted  by  the  Russians  and  the 
Byzantines;  but  the  great  mass  of  the  people  remained  in 
the  regions  around  Kiev  and  throughout  Southeastern 
Europe,  where  they  merged  with  their  co-religionists,  the 
Jews. 


THE  REMEDY  119 

The  immigration  that  came  to  America  in  the  quarter- 
century  before  the  war  is  now  generally  admitted  to  have 
been  a  very  bad  thing  for  the  nation.  Yet  immigration 
under  the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law  is  practically  the  same. 
Before  the  war  we  got  a  million  immigrants  a  year:  under 
the  Three  Per  Cent.  Law  we  get  a  third  of  a  million  a 
year.  The  difference  is  almost  entirely  numerical.  The 
situation  is  somewhat  similar  to  one  that  might  arise  if  an 
army  which  was  being  supplied  with  enormous  quantities  of 
spoiled  food  for  its  soldiers  should  protest  violently  to  the 
contractors,  and  the  contractors  should  reply  "Very  well: 
instead  of  shipping  you  one  million  tins  of  spoiled  beef  in  a 
given  time,  we  will  ship  you  only  one-third  of  a  million  tins 
of  spoiled  beef." 

Congress  has  a  bad  habit  of  getting  cold  feet  whenever 
there  is  a  howl  from  alien  interests  over  the  hardships  of 
any  law  that  restricts  immigration.  When  it  gets  cold  feet, 
it  at  once  decides  to  throw  away  the  offending  measure  and 
frame  up  another  temporary  law  that  will  bring  fewer  com- 
plaints. This  can't  be  done.  If  Congress  wishes — as  the 
country  wishes — a  law  which  shall  restrict  immigration 
properly,  it  must  steel  itself  to  complaints;  for  the  alien 
interests  in  America  will  always  emit  agonized  shrieks  at 
any  restrictions,  no  matter  how  mild  they  may  be.  And  if 
Congress  continues,  through  timidity  or  laziness  or  any 
other  cause,  to  enact  temporary  immigration  legislation  and 
fails  to  put  through  a  scientific  and  permanent  law  that  shall 
satisfactorily  settle  the  immigration  question  for  all  time, 
the  time  may  come  when  the  people  of  America  will  forget 
the  rottenness  of  the  pre-war  immigration,  and  when,  profit- 
ing by  their  forget  fulness,  the  alien  interests  and  the  steam- 
ship interests  and  the  big  manufacturing  interests  may 


120  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

suddenly  slip  over  some  legislation  of  their  own  that  will 
once  more  open  America's  sea-gates  to  the  same  sort  of  im- 
migrant inundations  that  submerged,  mongrelized  and 
wrecked  the  great  nations  and  civilizations  of  the  past. 

There  is  only  one  way  in  which  the  immigration  problem 
can  be  properly  handled,  and  that  is  by  providing  that  all 
immigration  to  the  United  States  shall  be  immigration  that 
is  needed  by  the  United  States  for  definite  purposes.  Of 
all  the  nations  in  the  world  which  have  first-hand  knowl- 
edge of  large  emigrant  or  immigrant  movements,  the  United 
States  is  the  one  nation  which  has  not  regulated  this  move- 
ment of  people  to  its  own  needs.  Italy's  admirable  emigra- 
tion laws  are  carefully  framed  to  suit  her  own  needs.  Hun- 
gary's emigration  system  was  planned  to  build  up  the  port 
of  Fiume,  bring  wealth  back  to  Hungary  and  keep  Hun- 
garians in  America  from  being  naturalized.  Bulgaria,  on 
the  other  hand,  wishing  to  keep  her  citizens  at  home,  for- 
bade steamship  agents  in  the  country.  Rumania  puts  a 
secret  mark  on  the  passports  of  Jews  which  prevents  them, 
once  they  have  left  Rumania,  from  getting  vises  which  will 
permit  them  to  return  to  Rumania  again.  Poland  facili- 
tates the  emigration  of  Jews,  and  hinders  the  emigration  of 
the  infinitely  more  desirable  Polish  peasant.  All  foreign 
countries  develop  laws  which  accrue  to  their  own  benefit 
and  meet  the  peculiar  needs  of  the  different  countries.  For 
the  United  States  to  delay  doing  so  is  suicidal. 


Waifs  of  An  Empire 

RUSSIA,  during  the  four  years  subsequent  to  October, 
1917,  presented  few,  if  any,  attractions  for  Russians  of 
birth,  breeding,  education,  wealth  or  unusual  talent — unless 
the  constant  danger  of  robbery,  torture  and  sudden  death 
can  be  classed  as  attractions. 

It  has  been  more  or  less  fashionable  in  certain  circles  to 
declare  that  many  of  the  Russians  who  fled  from  the  gentle 
attentions  of  the  Bolsheviks  between  1917  and  1921  would 
have  done  much  better  to  have  stayed  at  home.  This  may 
be  true.  Over  three  million  of  them  came  tearing  out 
after  the  Bolsheviks  broke  loose ;  and  it  is  more  than  likely 
that  several  of  them  would  be  more  conveniently  situated  if, 
after  the  Bolsheviks  had  appropriated  their  houses  and  their 
lands  and  their  jewels,  and  stood  a  few  of  their  relatives  in 
front  of  open  graves  and  turned  machine  guns  on  them, 
they  had  continued  to  linger  around  the  old  homestead 
and  trust  to  luck.  It  is  not  natural,  however,  so  to  linger; 
and  after  one  had  observed  the  working  of  the  Bolshevik 
mind  during  the  early  years  of  Bolshevik  rule,  one 
was  inclined  to  trust  less  in  luck  than  in  a  set  of  false 
whiskers  and  the  rapid  motion  of  his  own  legs.  One  became 
thoroughly  convinced  that  the  only  place  to  be  was  some 
place  where  the  Bolsheviks  weren't,  and  that  any  risk  was 
worth  taking  in  order  to  get  there. 

121 


122  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Several  superior  persons  have  spoken  to  me  about  Rus- 
sian refugees  in  a  disparaging  manner.  "The  great  trouble 
with  most  of  them,"  say  the  disparagers  patronizingly,  "is 
their  tendency  to  become  panic-stricken  and  run  away  before 
they  need  to."  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  talked  with  great 
numbers  of  Russian  refugees  in  every  part  of  Europe ;  and  it 
is  my  sincere  belief  that  if  those  who  disparage  them  had 
been  subjected  to  the  same  threats  and  the  same  indignities 
and  the  same  horrors  and  the  same  shadow  of  death  lurking 
in  the  background,  they  too  would  have  gone  into  the  pro- 
fession of  refugeeing  with  such  unparalleled  enthusiasm  that 
in  their  progress  from  one  country  to  another  they  would 
have  touched  only  the  high  spots.  That,  I  am  sure,  would 
have  been  my  simple  but  comprehensive  program  if  I  had 
been  in  their  position;  and  I  am  also  reasonably  sure  that 
it  would  have  been  the  program  of  any  one  who  possessed 
his  health  and  who  was  not  a  hopeless  idiot. 

Those  who  disparage  the  refugees  have  an  odd  habit  of 
forgetting  the  enormous  numbers  of  Russians  who  have 
been  killed  by  Extraordinary  Commissions  and  other  Bol- 
shevik agencies.  These  Extraordinary  Commissions  are 
known  to  the  Russians  as — I  spell  the  words  phonetically— 
Chesvi  Chaika.  Every  city  and  town  under  Bolshevik  con- 
trol had  its  Chesvi  Chaika.  Any  person  suspected  of  work- 
ing against  the  Soviets  was  haled  summarily  before  the 
Chesvi  Chaika  and  given  a  drumhead  trial.  If  he  was  found 
guilty,  he  was  led  from  the  judges'  chamber  to  a  closed  door ; 
the  door  was  opened ;  he  walked  across  the  threshold — and 
was  shot  or  clubbed  to  death.  The  Chesvi  Chaika  wasted 
no  time  on  empty  formalities  or  useless  delays.  This,  by 
the  way,  is  not  anti-Bolshevik  propaganda,  but  plain  fact. 
No  approximately  reliable  estimate  has  ever  been  made  of 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  123 

the  total  number  of  bourgeoisie  whom  the  Bolsheviks  mur- 
dered in  Russia  and  Siberia ;  but  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge 
and  belief,  from  information  which  I  collected  in  Siberia,  the 
Balkans  and  the  western  fringe  of  Soviet  Russia,  and  from 
reliable  observers  in  Bolshevik  territory,  the  number  could 
not  have  been  less  than  four  hundred  thousand.  It  was 
probably  very  much  larger;  but  it  was  certainly  not  less. 
At  any  rate,  a  great  number  of  people  of  the  same  type  as 
the  refugees  have  been  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks,  and  the 
person  who  would  find  fault  with  a  refugee  for  being  a 
refugee  might  also  be  expected  to  look  askance  at  a  pedes- 
trian for  getting  out  of  the  path  of  a  rapidly-moving  auto- 
mobile. 

Since  the  Bolsheviks  took  charge  of  Russian  affairs  back- 
in  the  autumn  of  1917,  over  three  million  Russians  have 
poured  out  of  the  country.  A  large  part  of  them  consisted 
of  the  so-called  intelligentsia  of  the  nation — people  of  noble 
birth,  people  of  wealth,  people  of  education,  people  who 
held  high  positions  under  the  old  Imperial  government. 
They  poured  out  on  foot,  in  carriages,  in  rowboats,  in  train- 
loads,  in  shiploads,  on  camel-back  even.  They  poured  out  of 
the  north  into  Finland.  They  poured  east  through  Siberia 
and  into  Japan  and  Manchuria.  They  poured  west  into 
Poland  and  Germany  and  the  other  countries  of  Western 
Europe;  and  they  poured  south  across  the  Black  and  Caspian 
Seas  into  the  Balkans  and  the  Mediterranean  countries. 
Sometimes  they  were  able  to  carry  jewels  with  them :  some- 
times they  were  able  to  take  a  few  extra  clothes ;  but  usually 
they  emerged  from  Russia  with  the  garments  in  which  they 
stood  and  nothing  else.  And  there  they  are,  three  million  of 
them  and  more,  penniless  and  friendless  and  helpless  in  com- 
munities which — as  a  result  of  after-war  disorganization  and 


124  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

depression — are  unable  to  provide  work  for  even  their  own 
people.  There  they  are;  admirals  working  as  janitors;  col- 
onels chopping  wood;  princesses  waiting  on  table;  generals 
presiding  over  restaurant  coat-rooms  or  selling  paper  flowers 
on  street  corners;  countesses  sewing  on  piece-work  in  attic 
bedrooms.  Those  are  the  fortunate  ones ;  for  they  have  work. 
Then  there  are  the  other  thousands — the  other  millions — 
who  have  no  work  and  who  can  get  no  work :  the  erstwhile 
generals  and  admirals  and  barons  and  princes  and  counts,  the 
one-time  governors  of  provinces  and  mayors  of  great  cities 
and  university  professors  and  merchant  princes  who  sit  all 
day  and  twiddle  their  thumbs  and  subsist  on  the  bounty  of 
others.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  refugees  have  suf- 
fered such  a  moral  breakdown  that  they  refuse  work  when 
work  is  offered  to  them :  they  ask  nothing  but  a  little  food 
and  a  little  tobacco  and  a  warm  place  where  they  can  doze 
and  talk  and  argue.  But  most  of  them  want  work — some- 
thing to  do — anything  to  do  that  will  give  them  a  few  pen- 
nies and  freedom  from  the  horrible  and  unbearable  mo- 
notony of  doing  nothing. 

The  streams  of  refugees  which  poured  out  of  Russia's 
human  reservoirs  never  entirely  dried  up  at  any  time, 
because  of  the  perpetual  activities  of  the  so-called  Extraor- 
dinary Commissions  for  combating  counter-revolutions. 
These  commissions  might  more  appropriately  be  called 
"Extraordinary  Commissions  for  the  Extermination  of 
Decent  Russians."  Soviet  representatives  in  various  Euro- 
pean countries  smile  deprecatingly  and  pityingly  at  the  mere 
suggestion  that  members  of  the  old  nobility  or  the  old  Im- 
perial army  who  have  fled  from  Russia  would  be  treated 
cruelly  if  they  came  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Soviets. 
Yet  the  heads  of  the  Extraordinary  Commissions  have  an 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  125 

unquenchable  hatred  for  the  Russians  who  formerly  held 
positions  of  power  and  authority  in  the  old  empire.  If  per- 
sons who  formerly  held  such  positions  were  called  before 
some  of  these  Extraordinary  Commissions,  they  were  prac- 
tically certain  to  be  sentenced  to  death  after  trials  which 
were  the  merest  travesties  on  justice.  The  Extraordinary 
Commissions  are  absolute  in  their  judgments  and  in  their 
powers.  A  Soviet  representative  in  Constantinople  might 
sweetly  declare  that  Prince  Galitzin  was  at  perfect  liberty  to 
return  from  Constantinople  to  Moscow  without  danger  of 
interference.  Yet  the  first  Extraordinary  Commission  that 
discovered  Prince  Galitzin's  whereabouts,  in  case  he  did 
return,  would  be  quite  free  to  run  him  into  a  dark  room  and 
drop  a  crowbar  on  his  head — and  the  chances  are  excellent 
that  it  would  do  so.  Many  members  of  the  so-called  bour- 
geoisie remained  hidden  or  living  quietly  in  Russia  until  the 
Extraordinary  Commissions  discovered  their  whereabouts 
and  summoned  them  to  appear.  When  this  happened,  they 
fled  as  rapidly  as  they  could  to  the  outside  world,  just  as  you 
or  I  would  flee.  This  accounts  for  the  perpetual  flowing  of 
the  refugee  streams.  During  a  counter-revolution  or  after 
a  counter-revolution,  or  after  any  unusual  anti-Bolshevik 
demonstrations,  the  refugee  streams  increased  to  roaring 
torrents,  and  adjacent  countries  were  flooded  with  princesses 
and  former  governors  of  provinces  and  ex-army  officers  and 
erstwhile  owners  of  large  estates. 

If  one's  imagination  is  insured  against  strain,  one  can 
get  a  faint  idea  of  the  present  Russian  refugee  situation  by 
imagining  the  government  of  the  United  States  taken  over 
by  a  class  of  people  who  loathed  with  a  deadly  loathing  the 
persons  who  formerly  occupied  all  positions  of  trust  and 
authority  and  power.  Imagine  all  of  our  army  and  navy 


126  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

officers  fleeing  to  Canada  or  Mexico  or  to  Europe  to  escape 
death  at  the  hands  of  these  people :  imagine  our  ex-presidents 
and  our  legislators  and  our  supreme  court  justices,  our  gov- 
ernors of  states  and  mayors  of  cities  and  present  and  past 
cabinet  ministers,  our  college  professors  and  railroad  presi- 
dents and  big  manufacturers,  our  bankers  and  merchants 
and  hotel  proprietors  and  newspaper  owners  and  gentlemen 
farmers — imagine  all  these  people  and  everybody  tainted  by 
association  with  them  or  relationship  to  them,  with  their 
wives  and  their  children,  pouring  out  of  New  York  and 
Chicago  and  Cleveland  and  St.  Louis  and  every  other  Ameri- 
can city  in  panic-stricken  streams,  traveling  in  freight  cars, 
traveling  on  foot  and  hiding  in  ditches  at  night,  traveling 
on  horseback  and  in  motor-boats  and  in  rowboats,  traveling 
for  weeks  and  months  and  even  for  years  through  sections  of 
the  country  where  all  transportation  had  broken  down,  and 
finally  escaping  to  another  country  with  nothing  of  their 
own  except  the  clothes  on  their  backs.  Imagine  all  this 
successfully,  and  you  will  have  a  hazy  notion  of  what  hap- 
pened when  the  Bolsheviks  got  after  the  bourgeoisie.  Name 
any  man  of  wealth  or  distinction  or  power  in  America,  or 
as  many  such  persons  as  you  may  care  to  name,  within 
reason — editors,  politicians,  authors,  millionaires,  clergy- 
men, surgeons  or  whatever  you  wish — and  I  will  name  for 
you  an  equal  number  of  Russians  of  corresponding  positions 
who  have  either  been  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks  or  have  fled 
from  Russia  with  their  families  and  are  living  penniless, 
jobless  and  half-starved  in  huts  or  tents  or  dug-outs  or 
freight  cars  or  the  corners  of  single  rooms  which  they  share 
with  other  families.  There  are  only  some  twenty-three  thou- 
sand names  in  the  last  Who's  Who  in  America  out  of  a  total 
population  of  one  hundred  and  five  million.  Take  a  look  at 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  127 

the  size  of  that  book,  and  then  consider  that  the  Bolsheviks 
have  run  out  of  Russia  practically  every  person  whose  past 
performances  entitled  him  to  a  place  in  a  Russian  Who's 
Who,  and  a  couple  of  million  or  so  in  addition.  It's  enough  to 
give  any  one  a  severe  case  of  inflammation  of  the  considerer. 

The  first  big  Russian  refugee  movement  started  in  the 
autumn  of  1917,  when  the  Kerensky  government  was  over- 
thrown by  the  Bolsheviks.  The  bloody  reign  of  terror 
which  was  immediately  instituted  drove  masses  of  high-class 
Russians  north  into  Finland,  west  into  Germany  and  Poland, 
and  east  along  the  line  of  the  trans-Siberian  railway  to  Vladi- 
vostok. It  also  drove  great  numbers  of  wealthy  and  highly 
educated  persons  from  the  cities  of  Northern  and  Western 
Russia  down  into  Southern  and  Eastern  Russia,  where  they 
lingered  and  wandered  for  one,  two  and  even  three  years 
before  they  were  finally  reduced  to  such  extremes  of  poverty 
and  fright  that  any  place  looked  better  than  Russia  to  them. 

Then  there  was  the  first  Odessa  evacuation  in  the  spring 
of  1919.  The  city  was  held  by  French  troops  under  Gen- 
eral d'Esperey.  The  Bolsheviks,  working  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Odessa,  had  succeeded  in  impregnating  some  of  the 
French  troops  with  Bolshevik  doctrines.  The  French 
evacuated  their  troops,  and  many  Russians  left  at  the  same 
time.  This  evacuation  was  soon  followed  by  the  second 
Odessa  evacuation.  Schilling,  a  Russian  general  who  was 
working  in  conjunction  with  the  anti-Bolshevik  leader,  Gen- 
eral Denikine,  had  occupied  Odessa;  but  when  the  Bolshe- 
viks attacked,  his  clutch  slipped.  He  evacuated  his  army 
and  a  large  number  of  refugees,  but  landed  his  army  in  the 
Crimea  to  join  Denikine,  who  was  backed  by  the  British. 
Some  of  the  refugees  also  landed  in  the  Crimea,  while  some 
continued  on  down  the  Black  Sea  to  Constantinople. 


128  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Early  in  1920  the  Denikine  army  cracked  wide  open 
before  the  Bolsheviks  and  retreated  to  Novorossisk  on  the 
northern  shore  of  the  Black  Sea.  From  Novorossisk  the 
entire  Denikine  army  and  many  civilian  refugees  were  evac- 
uated by  the  British  to  Constantinople.  A  great  number  of 
the  civilian  refugees  evacuated  at  that  time  had  started  from 
Petrograd  and  Moscow  late  in  1917,  or  early  in  1918;  and 
the  wanderings  of  many  of  them  were  of  a  nature  to  make 
the  celebrated  wanderings  of  the  late  Mr.  Ulysses  seem  by 
comparison  like  a  honeymoon  trip  to  Niagara  Falls. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  attempt  of  General  Yudenitch 
to  capture  Petrograd  from  the  Bolsheviks  broke  down  with 
a  crash,  and  another  torrent  of  refugees  poured  north  into 
Finland.  The  Yudenitch  disaster  was  closely  followed  by 
the  collapse  of  the  government  and  the  army  headed  by 
Admiral  Kolchak,  which  resulted  in  the  flight  of  thousands 
of  Russians  to  the  east  across  Siberia  and  to  the  south  toward 
the  Caspian  Sea  and  the  Black  Sea. 

A  little  later  the  expedition  of  General  Miller,  which  was 
attempting  to  work  down  to  Petrograd  from  Archangel 
with  British,  French  and  American  assistance,  blew  up  with 
a  dull  thud  and  released  another  stream  of  refugees,  part  of 
whom  made  their  way  into  Finland  on  foot  and  part  of 
whom  got  to  Norway  by  boat. 

At  the  time  of  the  evacuation  of  the  Denikine  troops 
from  Novorossisk,  the  most  able  of  Denikine's  officers  was 
General  Wrangel.  Wrangel  came  down  to  Constantinople 
with  the  Denikine  army,  and  then  turned  around  and  went 
back  to  the  Crimea,  which  was  held  by  General  Slaschoff 
with  two  thousand  cavalry  and  three  thousand  infantry. 
Wrangel  took  command  of  this  small  army,  reorganized  it, 
added  to  it,  and  started  a  promising  campaign  against  the 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  129 

Bolsheviks.  He  was  backed  by  the  French ;  and  because  of 
his  military  ability  and  patriotism,  the  anti-Bolsheviks  all 
over  Europe  were  convinced  that  he  was  going  to  succeed 
where  all  the  others  had  failed.  He  never  had  a  chance  to 
show  what  he  could  do,  however;  for  an  unprecedentedly 
cold  snap  froze  the  marshes  of  the  Crimea  early  in  Novem- 
ber, 1920,  and  made  it  possible  for  the  Bolsheviks  to  bring 
their  guns  across  them  and  attack  him  on  his  flank.  To 
save  his  army,  Wrangel  was  forced  to  retreat  at  top  speed. 
The  Crimea  was  full  of  refugees ;  and  they,  hearing  that  the 
Bolshevik  troops  were  coming  down  on  the  heels  of 
Wrangel's  army,  were  unable  to  work  up  any  enthusiasm 
over  remaining  to  act  as  a  reception  committee  for  them. 
So  when  Wrangel  moved  his  troops  aboard  the  ships  which 
lay  in  the  harbors  of  the  Crimea,  most  of  the  population  of 
the  Crimea  moved  aboard  also.  There  were  one  hundred 
and  eleven  ships;  and  more  than  one  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  soldiers  and  refugees  crowded  aboard  them.  A 
few  days  later  all  of  the  ships  lay  at  anchor  under  the  walls 
of  Constantinople;  and  the  French,  British  and  Americans 
in  that  city  were  wracking  their  brains  over  the  problem  of 
where  to  put  the  hundred  and  forty  thousand,  and  how  to 
feed  them  and  clothe  them.  The  adventures  of  these  one 
hundred  and  forty  thousand  Crimean  refugees  are  of  such  a 
remarkable  nature  that  they  will  be  described  more  fully  in 
the  next  chapter. 

Early  in  1921  the  Kronstadt  garrison  went  anti-Bol- 
shevik and  started  an  attack  on  Petrograd.  The  movement 
was  squelched  almost  immediately ;  but  as  a  result  of  it,  the 
refugee  stream  again  rose  to  a  high  level,  and  the  ice  of  the 
Finnish  Gulf  was  thickly  spotted  with  those  who  were 
fleeing  to  Finland  from  Petrograd  and  the  neighboring 


130  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

territory  because  they  preferred  a  penniless  and  friendless 
existence  in  a  strange  land  to  the  ruthless  vengeance  of  the 
Extraordinary  Commissions  of  Soviet  Russia. 

Late  in  1920,  according  to  reliable  information  received 
by  the  intelligence  department  of  two  European  countries, 
Lenine  attempted  to  stop  the  vicious  activities  of  the  Chesvi 
Chaikas  by  putting  them  out  of  business  and  transferring 
their  legitimate  work  to  the  Department  of  Justice  and  to 
the  revolutionary  tribunals,  which  are  controllable  organiza- 
tions. The  Chesvi  Chaikas  promptly  raised  a  fierce  and 
penetrating  outcry  against  such  interference;  for  the  mem- 
bers of  these  Extraordinary  Commissions  not  only  had  tre- 
mendous power  because  of  their  absolute  control  over  life 
and  death,  but  they  had  also  amassed  great  wealth  by  seizing 
the  property  of  their  victims  and  their  near-victims.  Con- 
sequently they  hadn't  the  slightest  desire  to  be  abolished. 
They  defeated  Lenine's  attempt  to  abolish  them  by  invent- 
ing a  plot  against  his  life  and  by  arresting  hundreds  of 
alleged  counter-revolutionaries  who,  according  to  them,  were 
parties  to  the  plot.  Lenine  was  so  impressed  with  the  effi- 
ciency and  importance  of  the  Chesvi  Chaikas,  after  this 
striking  demonstration  or  movie-scenario,  that  he  ceased  his 
attempt  on  their  existence. 

As  a  result  of  all  these  outbreaks,  and  of  the  violent 
activities  of  the  Extraordinary  Commissions  for  combating 
counter-revolution,  Europe  is  swamped  with  Russians.  In 
every  city  in  Europe,  in  1921,  the  traveler  saw  Russian  uni- 
forms and  the  old  army  caps  with  the  oval  placques  at  their 
peaks.  I  have  met  Russian  refugees  in  London,  Paris,  Ber- 
lin, Warsaw,  Marseilles,  Monte  Carlo,  Rome,  Athens.  Sa- 
lonika, Nagasaki,  Kobe,  Adrianople,  Belgrade,  Vienna, 
Budapest,  and  every  other  European  and  Asiatic  city  in 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  131 

which  I  have  been  in  the  last  three  years;  and  if  by  any 
chance  my  travels  had  taken  me  to  the  North  or  South 
Pole,  I  would  have  expected  to  find  that  a  few  Russian 
refugees  had  preceded  me.  Constantinople,  because  of  the 
influx  of  Russian  refugees,  seems  more  of  a  Russian  city 
than  a  Turkish  city.  An  American  gazed  contemplatively 
at  the  scattering  of  fezzes  and  the  large  numbers  of  Russian 
uniforms  which  passed  his  hotel  in  an  hour's  time,  and  then 
announced  that  the  foreign  quarter  of  Constantinople  looked 
like  a  Siberian  city  which  was  entertaining  a  Shriner's  con- 
vention. Figures  gathered  by  the  American  Red  Cross  and 
allied  organizations  which  are  doing  relief  work  among  the 
Russian  refugees  show  that  in  Europe  alone  there  are  two 
million,  one  hundred  thousand  of  them.  These  figures  cov- 
ered the  period  to  November,  1920.  There  are  no  figures 
available  on  the  numbers  of  refugees  that  have  come  out 
of  Russia  through  Siberia  and  are  living  in  Japan,  China, 
Manchuria  and  in  box-cars  along  the  lines  of  the  Trans- 
Siberian  and  the  Chinese  Eastern  Railway;  but  scattered 
reports  indicate  that  they  are  in  excess  of  one  million.  The 
Red  Cross  figures  for  Europe,  compiled  early  in  1921, 
showed  that  there  were  1,000,000  in  Poland,  560,000  in 
Germany,  175,000  in  France,  50,000  in  Austria,  50,000  in 
Constantinople,  30,000  in  Siberia,  25,000  in  Finland,  20,- 
ooo  in  Italy,  17,500  in  Esthonia,  15,000  in  England,  12,000 
in  Latvia;  while  the  remaining  140,000  were  divided  among 
Switzerland,  Bulgaria,  Hungary,  Egypt,  Tunis,  Greece, 
Sweden,  Norway,  Czecho-Slovakia  and  the  various  refugee 
camps  which  were  established  in  the  vicinity  of  Constan- 
tinople after  the  Wrangel  disaster. 

In  many  ways  these  Russian  refugees  are  the  most  unfor- 
tunate people  that  it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to  see.     The 


132  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Russia  which  they  knew  has  vanished  from  the  face  of  the 
earth,  so  that  they  have  no  government  to  which  they  can 
turn  for  assistance,  A  large  part  of  them  are  people  who 
have  had  no  training  whatever  in  any  form  of  useful 
endeavor,  so  that  the  only  positions  that  can  be  offered  to 
most  of  them  are  those  of  porters  or  watchmen  or  janitors 
or  dishwashers  or  waiters  or  similar  unskilled  pursuits — 
and  such  positions  are  few  and  far  between.  For  the  most 
part,  too,  they  are  people  who  had  lived  their  lives  in  com- 
fort, if  not  in  luxury,  until  the  Russian  Empire  went  on  the 
rocks  with  a  terrifying  crash;  and  to-day  there  are  few  of 
them  who  have  anything  which  they  can  call  their  own. 
Their  clothes,  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of  cases,  have  been 
given  to  them  by  charitable  organizations :  their  food  comes 
to  them  in  the  same  way,  and  in  such  a  way  that  they  never 
know  whether  or  not  there  will  be  food  for  them  on  the 
morrow.  For  months,  and  in  many  cases  for  years,  they 
have  been  buffeted  from  pillar  to  post,  and  have  undergone 
such  bodily  and  mental  anguish  that  their  morale  can  only 
be  discovered  with  a  divining-rod. 

Here,  for  example,  is  the  not  unusual  case  of  the 
Countess  Olga  Kapnist,  whose  husband  was  chief  of  the 
Imperial  General  Naval  Staff  during  the  war.  Before  and 
during  the  war  she  and  her  family  had  everything  that 
wealth  and  social  position  could  bring.  I  met  her  in  Rome 
through  the  Princess  Yousoupoff,  who  is  at  the  head  of  the 
Russian  Red  Cross  there.  It  was  the  Princess  Yousoupoff's 
son  who  assisted  the  notorious  Rasputine  to  shuffle  off  this 
mortal  coil,  and  who  cleaned  up  a  good  job  by  dropping  him 
through  a  hole  in  the  ice.  Princess  Yousoupoff  was  living 
with  friends  and  was  not  entirely  wrecked.  Countess  Kap- 
nist, however,  was  embroidering  linen  and  making  under- 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  133 

wear  so  that  she  might  support  herself  and  her  five  children. 
I  took  her  off  in  a  corner  and  she  told  me  her  story  in  a 
flat  monotonous  voice  which  would  have  been  more  appro- 
priate to  a  discussion  of  the  proper  method  of  cooking  beans 
than  to  the  story  which  she  told  me. 

When  the  Bolsheviks  seized  the  reins  of  government  in 
Petrograd,  the  Kapnists  decided  that  it  would  be  well  for 
them  to  hunt  a  more  retired  spot.  So  they  went  all  the  way 
down  across  Russia,  past  the  Sea  of  Azov  and  the  country  of 
the  Kuban  Cossacks  to  the  foot-hills  of  the  Caucasus  Moun- 
tains, where  they  had  a  summer  home  in  the  watering-place 
of  Essentouky.  Essentouky  and  two  near-by  watering- 
places,  Piatigorsk  and  Kislovodsk,  occur  repeatedly  in  the 
conversation  of  a  large  percentage  of  the  wealthy  Russian 
refugees  who  fled  from  the  north  to  the  south  of  Russia 
and  were  evacuated  from  the  south  ;  for  the  three  towns  were 
to  Russian  society  what  Newport  and  Bar  Harbor  are  to 
American  society.  People  who  fled  from  the  north  of 
Russia  turned  instinctively  toward  Essentouky,  Kislovodsk 
and  Piatigorsk  as  being  so  far  removed  from  the  center  of 
Russia  that  nothing  could  ever  happen  there. 

Early  in  1918,  however,  Bolshevik  governments  were 
set  up,  even  in  these  remote  towns.  At  the  beginning  the 
new  authorities  were  quite  amiable,  so  that  the  people  who 
had  come  down  from  the  north  for  safety  decided  to  stay 
where  they  were.  In  the  summer,  the  Russian  cavalry  com- 
mander Schkouro,  working  as  a  part  of  Denikine's  army, 
began  a  series  of  cavalry  raids  for  the  purpose  of  freeing  the 
Caucasus  from  Bolshevik  rule.  As  a  result  of  these  raids, 
the  Bolsheviks  began  to  take  hostages,  to  requisition  per- 
sonal belongings,  and  to  kill  the  hated  bourgeoisie.  All  of 
the  men  in  Essentouky  who  had  been  at  all  prominent  in 


134  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  old  Imperial  government  were  seized  and  thrown  into 
jail,  among  them  being  Countess  Kapnist's  husband.  After 
that,  she  explained,  she  couldn't  leave. 

In  October  the  Chesvi  Chaika  had  a  grand  clean-up  of 
hostages,  as  the  Bolsheviks  found  them  too  hard  to  guard 
and  feed.  In  one  night,  fifty-nine  of  them  were  slaughtered. 
The  husband  of  the  Countess  Kapnist  was  decapitated  with 
an  ax.  Among  the  others  who  were  murdered  at  the  same 
time  were  the  ex-minister  of  justice  of  the  Russian  Empire; 
the  ex-minister  of  communications  of  the  Russian  Empire; 
General  Radkoumitzeff  and  Prince  Ourousoff  and  his 
brother. 

This  killing  was  followed  by  a  series  of  requisitions  on 
the  part  of  the  Bolsheviks  which  relieved  the  countess  of 
all  her  jewels,  money,  silverware  and  other  valuables,  so 
that  she  and  her  five  children  were  entirely  without  means. 
With  some  other  equally  unfortunate  women  she  started  a 
cooperative  store  where  provisions  could  be  purchased  a 
little  more  cheaply  than  in  the  ordinary  provision  shops ;  but 
the  Bolsheviks,  finding  that  the  venture  was  profitable, 
closed  it  up.  Two  months  and  a  half  after  her  husband  had 
been  killed,  the  Bolsheviks  arrested  her  on  the  ground  that 
her  husband  had  been  anti-Bolshevik.  Her  five  children 
were  left  to  shift  for  themselves.  At  this  time  a  part  of 
Denikine's  Volunteer  Army  under  Wrangel  was  marching 
on  the  Caucasus,  so  she  and  many  other  women  of  good 
families  were  kept  as  hostages.  When  Wrangel's  men  got 
too  close  to  Essentouky  for  comfort,  the  Bolsheviks  fled, 
taking  their  hostages  with  them.  They  took  them  all  the 
way  to  Caspian  Sea,  where  they  released  them. 

Determined  to  get  back  to  her  children,  the  Countess 
Kapnist  rode  in  freight  cars,  on  the  roofs  and  running- 


Courtesy  of  American  Red  Cross 

Russian  refugees,  during  the  Odessa  evacuation,  struggling  to  pass  the 
British  guards  and  rush  aboard  the  Navajo,  American  Red  Cross 
Relief  ship.  The  Bolshevik  troops  had  reached  the  outskirts  of 
the  city. 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  135 

boards  of  coaches,  and  even  on  the  fronts  of  engines.  On 
the  way  she  met  Wrangel,  who  told  her  that  he  believed  her 
children  had  been  sent  on  to  Odessa.  She  kept  on,  however. 
When  she  reached  Essentouky  she  found  that  her  children 
had  disappeared.  The  next  day  she  came  down  with  typhus 
and  was  on  the  verge  of  death  for  seven  weeks.  Her  friends 
located  her  children  in  Novorossisk  and  had  them  sent  back 
to  her.  She  stayed  in  Essentouky,  living  on  the  bounty  of 
her  almost  equally  unfortunate  friends,  until  early  in  1920. 
Then  the  Bolsheviks  came  again,  so  she  and  her  children 
fled  to  Novorossisk — a  trip  which  ordinarily  takes  twelve 
hours,  but  which  took  her  eleven  days  and  nights.  In 
Novorossisk  she  lived  in  a  freight  car  for  a  time;  and  fi- 
nally, when  the  British  evacuated  Denikine's  army  from 
Novorossisk  to  Constantinople,  she  secured  a  place  in  the 
hold  of  a  British  ship.  The  weather  was  very  cold,  and  she 
and  her  children  had  to  stand  in  water  for  three  days;  but 
they  were  leaving  the  Bolsheviks  behind  them,  so  nothing 
mattered.  In  Constantinople  her  son  caught  scarlet  fever. 
The  British  sent  her  and  her  children  to  the  concentration 
camp  on  Prinkipo  Island,  near  Constantinople,  where  they 
lived  for  four  months.  Then  her  friends  in  Italy  sent  her 
enough  money  to  get  to  Rome.  When  I  talked  to  her  she 
was  supporting  herself  by  needlework,  but  she  hoped  to  be 
able  to  open  a  pension  for  tourists  if  she  could  ever  find  a 
suitable  house — and  somebody  to  back  her. 

The  case  of  the  Countess  Kapnist  is  by  no  means  an 
unusual  one.  I  have  talked  with  scores  of  women  who 
worked  down  to  Essentouky,  Piatigorsk  and  Kislovodsk 
and,  after  months  of  fearful  hardships  and  suffering,  were 
evacuated  from  Odessa,  Novorossisk  or  the  Crimea.  Thou- 
sands of  them  escaped  by  the  same  route,  and  endured  expe- 


136  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

riences  which  might  be  expected  to  kill  any  human  being 
who  didn't  have  the  constitution  of  a  truck-horse.  It  speaks 
well  for  the  powers  of  resistance  of  the  human  race  that  so 
few  of  the  refugees  died  of  exposure  or  privation.  A  great 
many  of  them  have  gone  mad  because  of  their  experiences. 
At  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  shelter  in  Constantinople,  when  I  was 
there,  for  example,  a  young  mother  went  mad  and  nearly 
succeeded  in  choking  her  baby  to  death  before  the  attendants 
could  overpower  her. 

The  Princess  Sherbatoff,  who  is  a  daughter  of  Stolypin, 
the  former  Russian  prime  minister,  lived  on  very  large 
estates  in  Podolia.  The  Bolsheviks  slaughtered  her  hus- 
band, her  sister,  her  sister-in-law  and  her  mother-in-law  in 
cold  blood.  She  herself  was  tremendously  popular  with  the 
people  on  her  estates.  They  hid  her  from  the  Bolsheviks 
and  passed  her  from  hand  to  hand  across  the  border.  She 
is  in  a  Berlin  sanatorium  to-day,  partly  paralyzed  and  men- 
tally affected  by  her  experiences.  Lots  of  them  go  mad,  but 
few  of  them  die. 

General  Rennenkampf  was  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
Russian  generals  during  the  war.  His  widow  arrived  in 
Rome  while  I  was  there  early  in  1921.  She  had  been 
brought  to  Constantinople  when  the  Wrangel  army  was 
taken  out  of  the  Crimea,  and  she  had  succeeded  in  getting 
the  captain  of  a  small  steamer  to  take  her  to  Italy  by  giving 
him  her  last  piece  of  jewelry.  She  had  tried  to  find  work 
in  Naples,  but  had  found  the  city  crowded;  so  she  literally 
bummed,  as  the  saying  goes,  her  way  from  Naples  up  to 
Rome.  When  she  reached  Rome  she  collapsed  on  the  side- 
walk in  front  of  the  railway  station.  A  heavy  rain  was 
falling,  and  a  kindly  carriage-driver  picked  her  up  and 
bundled  her  into  his  carriage.  She  had  no  money  left,  and 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  137 

she  knew  nobody  in  Rome.  The  carriage-driver  finally 
took  her  to  his  own  small  lodgings  and  let  her  sleep  there. 
On  the  following  day  he  took  her  to  the  Princess  You- 
soupoff.  They  had  known  each  other  in  Petrograd,  but  the 
hardships  which  Madame  Rennenkampf  had  undergone  had 
so  changed  her  that  the  Princess  Yousoupoff  could  scarcely 
recognize  her.  Her  clothes  were  ragged  and  soiled.  She 
had  no  stockings  at  all;  and  on  her  feet  she  wore  dancing 
slippers  which  had  been  given  to  her.  Madame  Rennen- 
kampf is  an  old  woman.  She  wants  to  work,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  she  could  do  any  effective  work  if  work  could 
be  found  for  her. 

There  are  two  Princess  Galitzins  in  Rome.  One  is  an 
old  lady  whose  husband  was  the  head  of  the  czar's  estates 
at  Gatchina,  and  very  wealthy.  She  was  brought  out  of 
Russia  by  her  son  and  daughter  after  the  Denikine  smash. 
They  were  both  penniless,  but  the  son  rushed  back  to  the 
Crimea  to  fight  with  Wrangel.  The  daughter  supports  her 
mother  and  herself  by  teaching,  for  she  speaks  several 
languages,  as  do  most  of  the  wealthy  Russians.  The  mother, 
weakened  by  exposure  and  the  horrors  through  which  she 
had  passed,  had  only  a  few  weeks  to  live  when  I  reached 
Rome.  The  other  Princess  Galitzin  was  also  very  wealthy. 
She  plays  the  piano  at  dancing  classes,  and  is  glad  to  earn 
six  lire  an  hour,  or  about  twenty-five  cents.  Her  husband 
is  very  anxious  to  get  a  position  as  chauffeur 

There  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Russians  whose  sit- 
tion  to-day  is  exactly  like  that  of  Madame  Rennenkampf 
and  the  Galitzins.  Princess  Yousoupoff,  head  of  the  Rus- 
sian Red  Cross  in  Rome,  applied  in  person  to  the  Pope  and 
begged  him  to  allow  Russian  refugees  to  occupy  empty  mon- 
asteries. The  city  was  so  crowded  that  even  tourists  were 


138  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

unable  to  get  quarters,  and  on  almost  any  night  during  the 
month  preceding  Easter  one  could  see  a  dozen  women  tour- 
ists sleeping  in  armchairs  in  the  lounge  of  the  best  hotel. 
The  Pope  refused  her  request  because  the  fear  of  Bolshevism 
was  very  great  in  Italy,  and  even  those  Russians  who  had 
risked  their  lives  in  fleeing  from  it  were  suspected  of  it. 
They  are  the  paupers  of  the  world,  and  the  world  seems 
incapable  of  providing  poor-houses  for  them. 

The  Russian  embassy  in  Paris  is  the  headquarters  of  the 
Russian  refugees  in  France  who  have  no  money,  no  jewelry 
to  sell,  no  clothes,  no  jobs  and  no  hope.  The  Russian 
embassies  in  Europe  are  sad  reminders  of  Russia's  departed 
grandeur.  The  grounds  are  seedy  and  unkempt.  Dust  has 
settled  heavily  on  the  portraits  and  the  mirrors  and  the 
gilded  chairs.  The  buildings  are  dingy  and  fusty  and  down 
at  heel.  In  place  of  the  scores  of  liveried  servants  who, 
in  the  old  days,  sprang  from  behind  every  portiere  and  from 
the  shadow  of  every  piece  of  furniture  to  take  the  visitor's 
wraps  and  to  escort  him  from  room  to  room  there  are  now 
only  occasional  hungry-looking  attendants,  in  threadbare 
civilian  dress.  Sometimes  one  even  finds  an  ex-admiral  or  a 
former  general  acting  as  door-attendant  or  embassy  mes- 
senger, but  more  often  the  work  is  done  by  soldier-refugees 
in  their  ancient  uniform-blouses. 

Persons  of  a  humorous  turn  of  mind  are  able  to  get 
many  a  merry  laugh  nowadays  over  the  Russian  embassies, 
speculating  as  to  what  country  or  government  they  repre- 
sent, and  as  to  where  they  get  the  money  on  which  they  con- 
tinue to  do  business.  I  have  seen  so  many  Imperial  Guard 
officers  working  in  kitchens,  however,  and  so  many  prin- 
cesses and  generals'  daughters  waiting  on  table,  and  so  many 
former  millionaires  hiding  indoors  until  nightfall  so  that 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  139 

they  could  venture  out  on  the  street  without  exposing  their 
ragged  clothes  to  public  view,  that  humorous  remarks  on 
Russian  embassies  have  lost  their  savor  and  piquancy  for  me. 
The  embassies  represent — and  I  think  that  most  decent  peo- 
ple are  content  that  it  should  be  so — the  three  million  Rus- 
sians who  have  been  driven  from  their  country  by  the  scur- 
viest set  of  knaves  that  ever  wrecked  a  nation;  and  the 
meager  amount  of  money  on  which  they  exist  is  the  income 
on  the  Russian  government  money  which  was  on  deposit  in 
the  banks  of  different  nations  when  the  revolution  took 
place.  Permission  for  this  money  to  be  used  by  most  of 
the  embassies  has  hitherto  been  given  by  the  anti-Bolshevik 
governments  of  Kolchak,  Denikine,  Yudenitch  and  Wrangel 
as  they  stood  weakly  and  temporarily  on  their  feet — or  so, 
at  any  rate,  I  have  been  assured.  There  is  one,  at  least,  of 
these  Russian  embassies  which  is  its  own  authority  for  the 
use  of  the  Russian  money  in  the  country  where  the  embassy 
is  located;  and  the  money  is  evidently  being  used  for  the 
benefit  of  certain  favored  political  parties  and  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  other  parties  less  favored.  Such  tactics  smell  too 
strongly  of  the  old  rotten  Russian  regime  to  be  received  with 
any  favor  by  disinterested  American  and  British  and  French 
organizations  which  are  trying  to  help  Russian  refugees 
without  thought  of  difference  in  politics,  race  or  creed. 
There  are  even  some  branches  of  the  Russian  Red  Cross 
which  need  to  be  forcibly  reminded  that  the  question  of 
politics  and  favoritism  shouldn't  be  permitted  to  creep  into 
relief  work. 

The  sister  of  the  Russian  ambassador  in  Paris,  Madem- 
oiselle Maklakoff,  devotes  her  entire  time  to  assisting 
refugees.  The  first  time  that  I  walked  into  the  embassy,  a 
long  line  of  them  was  waiting  to  see  her.  A  young  woman 


140  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

had  just  collapsed  from  hunger.  Every  woman  who  was 
waiting  wore  mourning,  and  not  one  of  them  had  enough 
money  to  buy  food  for  herself  or  her  children  on  the  follow- 
ing day. 

Badly  off  as  are  the  refugees  in  Paris,  Berlin,  London 
and  Rome,  they  are  infinitely  better  off  than  those  in  the 
camps  or  the  smaller  centers ;  for  those  who  are  young  and 
able  and  willing  can  usually  find  something  to  do  which 
will  partly  support  them.  The  hundreds  of  men  and  women 
and  young  girls  who  were  reared  in  luxury  and  idleness  in 
Russia  are  helped,  in  the  large  cities,  to  learn  trades  which 
will  make  it  possible  for  them  to  support  themselves.  Thus, 
in  Paris,  a  committee  headed  by  Mademoiselle  Maklakoff 
sends  men  refugees  to  a  school  where  they  learn  to  be 
electricians,  and  mechanicians.  In  the  same  school,  women 
refugees  learn  dentistry,  photographic  retouching  and  weav- 
ing. Another  school  teaches  shorthand  and  typing  to  the 
refugees.  In  Constantinople  and  Finland  and  Salonica  and 
Tunis  and  Egypt,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  nothing  what- 
ever for  the  refugees  to  do  except  hope  for  better  days — and 
the  person  who  is  stuck  in  Europe  to-day  with  no  resources 
except  hope  is  even  more  unpleasantly  situated  than  a  man 
in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific  without  a  boat  or  a  life  preserver. 

In  Paris  I  met  a  young  woman  whose  family  was  a  very 
fine  one  and  whose  name  is  one  of  the  best  known  names  in 
Russia.  The  authenticity  of  her  story  was  vouched  for  by 
the  Russian  embassy;  but  the  girl  herself  begged  me  not  to 
use  her  name  for  fear  that  the  position  which  she  had  made 
for  herself  in  Paris  might  be  affected. 

This  young  woman  had  the  knack  of  designing  cos- 
tumes, though  her  only  efforts  in  that  direction  prior  to  the 
revolution  had  been  directed  toward  designing  her  own 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  141 

hats  and  dresses.  After  the  revolution,  when  the  Bolsheviks 
decreed  that  all  persons  should  work,  she  had  taken  to 
designing  costumes  for  the  Petrograd  ballet.  Her  mother 
was  dead;  her  father  was  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks;  her 
brother  went  mad ;  her  nurse  disappeared.  She  lived  alone 
in  one  room  of  her  family's  Petrograd  apartment.  There 
was  no  light  and  no  water  to  be  had,  and  at  night  she  hunted 
through  the  city  for  fuel.  She  lived  in  this  way  for  a  year 
and  a  half,  during  which  time  she  was  unmolested  by  the 
Bolsheviks.  But  the  life,  she  said,  was  unbearable,  what 
with  the  cold  and  hunger  and  the  lack  of  her  former  friends. 
So  she  put  on  the  clothes  of  a  peasant  and  tramped  out  to 
the  Finnish  border.  At  night  she  slipped  across  the  lines  and 
tramped  onward  until  she  reached  a  small  town  on  the  Gulf 
of  Finland.  Her  entire  resources  consisted  of  the  peasant 
clothes  in  which  she  stood,  a  pair  of  old  ear-rings  and  a 
brooch  which  had  belonged  to  her  mother,  and  a  single 
Russian  sable  skin  which  would,  she  knew,  provide  a  dash 
of  richness  for  a  suit  if  she  could  ever  earn  enough  money  to 
buy  one.  The  first  thing  about  this  Finnish  town  which 
struck  her,  she  said,  was  the  frightfulness  of  the  hats  which 
the  women  wore.  She  said  that  they  were  the  lowest  form 
of  hat-life.  So  she  picked  out  the  best-looking  Finnish 
woman  that  she  could  find,  and  offered  to  make  her  a  hat  for 
the  price  of  the  materials  and  two  days'  food.  She  said  that 
she  disliked  to  go  up  to  a  perfect  stranger  on  the  street  and 
make  an  offer  of  that  nature,  because  such  an  approach 
could  scarcely  be  construed  as  highly  complimentary.  The 
Finnish  woman,  fortunately,  wasn't  sensitive,  and  she 
accepted  the  offer.  The  Russian  girl  purchased  hat  material 
for  ten  marks,  which  is  as  little  as  it  sounds,  and  evolved  a 
hat  which  almost  made  the  Finnish  woman  weep  with  grati- 


142  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

fication.  It  was  such  a  wonderful  hat  that  it  even  caused  the 
woman's  husband  to  unstrap  the  family  sock  and  make  the 
girl  a  present  of  another  ten  marks — which  is  an  unusual 
token  of  appreciation  in  Finland.  The  sight  of  the  new  hat, 
when  the  Finnish  woman  wore  it  for  the  first  time,  almost 
caused  her  to  be  mobbed  by  acquaintances  who  wished  to 
know  where  she  got  it. 

The  young  Russian  woman  at  this  point  interjected  a 
remark  which  will  bear  out  the  suspicions  of  men  who  are 
obliged  to  pay  the  monthly  bills  of  their  womenfolk. 
"Women  of  all  classes  and  all  positions,"  she  said,  "are 
always  interested  in  hats  and  are  always  ready  to  buy  hats." 
At  any  rate,  the  Finnish  woman  revealed  the  source  of  her 
new  hat,  and  the  young  Russian  woman  was  immediately 
flooded  with  orders.  She  made  hats  for  practically  every 
woman  in  town,  incidentally  using  up  all  the  available  hat- 
trimming,  so  that  expeditions  were  formed  by  heckled  hus- 
bands to  shoot  Finnish  seagulls  in  order  that  more  hat-trim- 
ming might  be  provided.  Out  of  that  one  town  she  cleaned 
up  six  thousand  marks.  With  this  sum  she  headed  for  Paris, 
where  the  care-free  tourist  willingly  submits  to  highway 
robbery  in  order  to  acquire  the  indefinable  something  which 
is  popularly  supposed  to  go — and  frequently  does  go — with 
a  Paris  hat.  She  worked  over  to  Stockholm,  down  to 
Copenhagen,  over  to  Berlin  and  across  to  Paris,  stopping 
long  enough  in  each  place  to  make  enough  money  in  hat- 
establishments  to  pay  her  way  to  the  next  stop. 

When  she  reached  Paris  she  was  broke  and  knew  no 
one.  She  went  to  the  Russian  embassy,  where  Madame 
Maklakoff,  after  hearing  her  story,  loaned  her  enough 
money  to  rest  for  a  few  days,  and  got  her  a  little  attic  room 
in  an  out-of-the-way  corner  of  the  city.  She  started  out  to 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  143 

hunt  a  job  with  a  few  sketches  of  ideas  which  she  had  for 
dresses.  She  tried  one  of  the  best  dress-makers  in  Paris, 
and  was  hired  instantly.  Probably  almost  every  American 
woman  who  looked  into  the  fashionable  dressmaking  estab- 
lishments of  Paris  in  1921  has  seen  this  young  woman's 
costume  sketches.  For  working  from  nine  in  the  morning 
until  seven  at  night  and  evolving  five  costumes  a  day,  she 
received  two  hundred  seventy-five  francs  a  month — or  less 
than  five  dollars  a  week — and  her  lunch  and  dinner.  She 
had  a  few  words  to  say  concerning  the  exploitation  of  labor 
in  France  that  were  strong  enough  to  fry  eggs.  She 
declared  that  she  had  worked  in  a  good  many  places  since 
the  Revolution,  but  that  she  had  never  worked  in  a  place 
where  girls  were  forced  to  work  for  such  pitiful  wages  as  in 
Paris.  Her  sketches  became  so  well  known  that  she  left  the 
dressmaking  establishment,  did  her  work  in  her  own  room, 
and  sold  the  sketches  to  the  highest  bidder.  Then  a  woman 
who  had  saved  enough  money  to  start  an  establishment  of 
her  own  made  her  an  offer  to  go  into  partnership  with  her. 
The  young  woman  is  well  on  her  way  to  an  independent 
fortune  to-day.  She  is  still  living  in  the  one  room  that 
Madame  Maklakoff  got  for  her,  and  as  fast  as  the  money 
comes  in,  it  is  salted  away  in  the  bank. 

I  asked  this  young  woman  whether  her  experiences  in 
Soviet  Russia  and  in  escaping  from  Soviet  Russia  had 
affected  her  in  any  way.  "Not  in  the  least,"  she  replied. 
"I've  been  too  busy  working;  and  when  I'm  working,  I'm 
always  happy.  I'm  glad  that  I  had  to  start  working,  and  I 
know  that  I  shall  never  stop.  Even  when  I  go  back  to  Rus- 
sia I  shall  keep  on." 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  chronicle  this  girl's  experience.  The 
experiences  of  most  of  the  refugees  are  very  different. 


144  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Many  of  them  are  too  old  to  be  entrusted  with  work  or  to 
undertake  it  if  it  exists.  Many  of  them,  having  been  trained 
to  no  sort  of  work  whatever,  are  unable  to  locate  the  only 
sorts  of  unskilled  labor  of  which  they  are  capable.  Many 
of  them,  unfortunately,  are  unwilling  to  work  at  tasks  which 
they  consider  below  their  dignity.  And  very  many  of  them, 
for  various  reasons,  are  unwilling  to  work  at  all.  This  latter 
class,  oddly  enough,  is  not  usually  recruited  from  among 
the  ranks  of  the  old  Russian  aristocracy.  The  best  and  the 
most  willing  workers  among  the  refugees  come  from  among 
the  aristocrats  who  had  never  done  a  genuine  stroke  of  work 
in  their  lives  until  the  Bolsheviks  became  socially  prominent. 
The  officers  of  the  best  regiments  of  the  old  Russian  army 
will  accept  any  sort  of  position  that  will  enable  them  to 
live — as  a  general  rule.  The  officers  of  the  Russian  armies 
subsequent  to  the  Revolution  are  very  different  propositions. 
I  was  discussing  the  matter  with  the  Russian  ambassador 
in  Athens — Prince  Demidoff.  "Our  greatest  problem  in 
providing  enterprises  in  which  the  Russian  refugees  can 
work,"  said  he,  "is  to  make  the  men  work.  Many  of  them 
won't  work  at  all.  We  can't  get  them  to  work.  They  want 
to  sit  around  and  be  fed.  The  only  way  to  handle  them  is 
to  put  a  strong  man  over  them  and  drive  them  to  work  by 
sheer  force."  Nearly  all  of  the  Athens  refugees  are  officers 
and  men  of  the  armies  that  fought  the  Bolsheviks  in  South 
Russia.  "The  officers  of  the  new  army  are  a  sorry  lot," 
said  Demidoff.  "They're  lazy  and  impossible." 

The  same  statement  was  made  to  me  by  people  who 
worked  with  the  Russian  refugees  in  London,  Paris,  Rome, 
Finland  and  Warsaw.  Enormous  numbers  of  them  not  only 
have  the  regular  Russian  temperament,  which  is  the  stolid, 
dull  Slav  temperament  exaggerated  by  centuries  of  stern 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  145 

taskmasters  who  did  all  their  thinking  for  them,  but  this 
temperament  has  been  further  exaggerated  by  years  of  army 
life,  by  the  wanderings  of  the  last  few  years  and  by  the 
charity  on  which  they  have  existed  since  they  left  Russia. 

As  a  result  of  their  pauperization,  the  mental  attitude  of 
many  of  them  is  exactly  the  same  as  that  of  the  American 
tramp  or  hobo.  Europe,  however,  isn't  so  well  adapted  to 
hoboing  as  is  America,  because  of  passport  and  vise  restric- 
tions, the  large  number  of  languages  which  one  must  know 
in  order  to  ask  for  food  at  back  doors,  and  the  general  lack 
of  edibles.  This  mental  attitude  of  a  part  of  the  refugees 
can  not  be  ignored  if  the  Russian  refugee  problem — which 
has  grown  to  such  an  extent  that  it  has  become  an  inter- 
national problem — is  to  be  solved.  Nor  can  Russian 
refugees  as  a  whole  be  condemned  because  certain  of  their 
numbers  refuse  to  work.  Russian  refugees  exist  in  their 
present  number  as  a  direct  result  of  Russia's  fight  against 
Germany  in  behalf  of  the  Allies.  The  government  which 
led  Russia  into  the  war  has  gone  to  pot.  Anybody  who  can 
hold  up  the  negative  side  of  a  debate  as  to  whether  or  not 
the  Allies  ought  to  take  care  of  the  Russian  refugees  is 
entitled  to  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of  the  Raspberry. 

In  Paris  alone  there  are  enough  Russian  refugees  of  all 
classes  to  populate  an  entire  Russian  city.  There  are  pro- 
fessors of  every  branch  of  learning,  doctors,  authors, 
lawyers,  judges,  merchants,  financiers,  legislators,  engineers 
and  skilled  workmen  of  all  sorts.  There  are  also  enough 
barons  and  counts  and  princes  to  supply  a  dozen  Russian 
cities  with  many  more  titles  than  they  need.  The  business 
of  titles,  like  the  business  of  czar's  coachman,  was  carried  to 
excess  in  Russia.  Wherever  my  wanderings  have  carried 
me  in  Europe,  I  have  always  been  shown  a  czar's  coachman. 


146  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

There  is  a  czar's  coachman  in  London,  Paris,  Berlin,  Rome 
and  every  other  European  capital.  It  is  my  belief  that  if 
the  czar's  coachmen  who  are  now  refugees  in  Europe  were 
to  march  in  review,  they  would  take  over  forty-five  minutes 
to  pass  a  given  point.  Evidently  the  czar  had  a  fresh  coach- 
man after  every  meal ;  and  the  business  of  hiring  and  firing 
czar's  coachmen  must  have  grown  to  huge  proportions. 
It  may  be  that  the  czar  had  to  have  a  coachman  whose  com- 
plexion matched  each  one  of  his  uniforms,  or  something  of 
that  nature. 

The  matter  of  titles  was  even  worse,  apparently.  At 
the  Russian  embassy  in  Constantinople  a  colonel  of  an  old 
Imperial  Guard  regiment  was  giving  me  some  refugee 
addresses,  and  he  named  a  certain  lady  whom  we  will  call 
Princess  Kokine.  I  stopped  him.  "How  is  it,"  I  asked  him, 
"that  there's  a  Princess  Kokine  here  when  there  is  also  a 
Princess  Kokine  in  Paris  and  another  in  Berlin  and  another 
in  Warsaw  and  another  in  Rome?"  He  shrugged  his 
shoulders.  "It's  a  large  family,"  he  replied.  "There  are 
enough  Princess  Kokines  to  stretch  all  the  way  across  the 
Black  Sea  if  you  place  them  end  to  end."  He  explained 
further  that  if  a  Prince  Kokine  had  seven  sons,  each  one  of 
them  would  be  a  prince,  and  that  each  son  of  each  of  the 
seven  would  also  be  a  prince,  so  that  at  the  end  of  a  few 
generations  there  might  easily  be  enough  Prince  Kokines 
to  form  an  eight-team  baseball  league.  In  certain  parts  of 
Russia,  notably  the  south,  the  title  of  prince  appears  to  have 
been  very  similar  to  the  title  of  colonel  in  Kentucky  and 
other  southern  states,  where  it  is  frequently  awarded  by 
tacit  agreement  to  gentlemen  who  have  killed  more  than  one 
rattlesnake  or  otherwise  served  the  public  in  a  noteworthy 
manner.  A  Petrograd  prince  spoke  to  me  very  disparag- 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  147 

ingly  of  princes  from  the  Caucasus,  and  declared  stoutly 
that  any  one  in  the  Caucasus  who  had  more  than  one  house 
was  a  prince  by  common  consent.  This  statement,  I  am 
sure,  is  slightly  exaggerated;  but  it  is  certain  that  among 
Russian  refugees,  princes  and  princesses  are  almost  as  com- 
mon as  are  home-brewers  in  America.  When  one  first 
comes  in  contact  with  Russian  refugees,  one  becomes  quite 
thrilled  at  news  of  a  princess  working  in  a  restaurant;  but 
after  one  has  had  a  little  experience  with  them,  informa- 
tion concerning  a  toiling  princess  is  of  no  more  moment 
than  information  concerning  a  loafing  czar's  coachman. 
No  mistake  should  be  made  about  the  Russian  aristocracy, 
however.  As  loafers,  they  were  encumberers  of  the  earth, 
as  are  most  loafers,  whether  they're  American  loafers  or 
English  loafers  or  Irish  loafers  or  Russian  loafers.  As 
workers,  they  are  a  fine  lot  of  people.  Without  entering 
into  any  controversy  with  Socialists  or  extreme  democrats, 
I  wish  to  state  that  I  have  taken  a  careful  look  at  Russian 
aristocrats  and  Russian  workmen  side  by  side  in  a  number 
of  refugee  camps,  and  that,  as  a  result,  if  I  had  to  hire  five 
hundred  Russians  from  a  certain  class  for  any  sort  of  work, 
whether  it  were  ditch-digging  or  automobile  driving  or 
farming  or  bookkeeping,  I'd  pick  them  from  the  ranks  of 
the  aristocrats  every  time.  There  is  a  good  reason  for  this : 
the  aristocracy  of  Russia  is  recruited  mostly  from  the  Nor- 
dic race — tall,  blond,  long-skulled  people — whereas  the  bulk 
of  the  population  of  Russia  belongs  to  the  Alpine  race. 

A  majority  of  these  refugee  aristocrats,  unfortunately, 
have  the  idea  that  when,  as  and  if  the  Bolshevik  regime  col- 
lapses, they  are  going  to  return  to  Russia  to  occupy  their 
former  estates  and  take  up  their  ornamentally  useless  lives 
where  they  were  dropped  in  1917.  This  idea,  according  to 


148  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  opinions  of  most  persons  who  have  been  watching  Russia 
carefully  for  the  past  year,  is  about  as  worthless  as  a  last 
year's  wren's  nest.  After  the  Bolsheviks  have  finished 
messing  with  Russia,  the  country  will  need  all  the  Nordics 
in  sight  to  form  a  decent  government;  but  it  will  have  as 
little  use  for  windy  titles  and  limitless  estates  and  the  old 
aristocratic  regime  as  Harvard  University  would  have  for  a 
course  in  safe-blowing.  The  sooner  that  the  Russian 
refugees  reconcile  themselves  to  this  eventuality,  the  better  it 
will  be  for  themselves,  for  Russia,  and  for  the  agencies  which 
are  standing  between  the  refugees  and  starvation. 

At  the  beginning  of  1921  the  refugees  in  Paris  were 
divided  into  three  classes.  The  first  class  was  made  up  of 
the  persons  who  had  large  estates  and  great  wealth  in 
Russia  before  the  revolution.  Most  of  these  people  escaped 
from  Russia  with  a  few  beautiful  furs  and  jewels  which 
they  could  sell  in  order  to  tide  them  over  for  a  time.  Some 
could  live  for  only  a  few  months  on  the  proceeds  of  these 
sales,  while  some  could  live  for  two  or  three  years.  The 
second  class  consisted  of  persons  who  earned  comfortable 
salaries  in  Russia,  but  depended  entirely  on  their  work — 
such  people,  for  example,  as  professors,  lawyers,  teachers, 
newspaper  men,  doctors,  artists,  engineers,  bank  clerks,  and 
government  employees.  The  third  class  comprised  the 
skilled  laborers — stenographers,  milliners,  mechanics  and  so 
on. 

There  are  several  banks  in  Paris  which  are  managed  by 
wealthy  Russians.  A  certain  refugee  named  Porlotsoff,  who 
had  factories  in  the  Urals  and  was  assistant  to  the  minister 
of  foreign  affairs  before  the  first  revolution,  evolved  a 
scheme  whereby  the  refugees  who  could  prove  that  they  had 
property  in  Russia,  stocks  and  bonds  in  Russian  banks,  and 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  149 

other  valuable  holdings  which  were  not  accessible  because  of 
the  activities  of  the  Bolsheviks,  could  negotiate  loans  from 
French  banks.  The  Russian-managed  banks  backed  these 
loans;  and  it  was  arranged  that  every  person  who  could 
prove  large  Russian  holdings  could  borrow  a  thousand 
francs  a  month  for  himself  and  five  hundred  francs  a  month 
for  each  person  dependent  on  him.  These  loans  were  to  be 
granted  until  March  I,  1921,  the  understanding  being  that 
the  Bolshevik  government  was  to  collapse  by  that  date  so 
that  the  borrowers  could  get  at  their  possessions  and  repay 
their  debts.  By  Christmas  of  1920  the  Paris  banks  had  loaned 
ten  million  francs  on  this  arrangement.  On  March  I,  1921, 
the  arrangement  stopped.  How  the  first  class  of  Russian 
refugees  in  Paris  is  living  to-day,  nobody  seems  to  know. 
Nobody  seems  to  know  in  any  city  how  the  Russians  manage 
to  exist,  as  they  so  frequently  do,  without  any  work  and 
without  any  apparent  means  of  getting  money,  and  without 
any  possessions  which  can  be  pawned  or  sold.  The  wealthy 
refugees — or  rather,  the  refugees  who  had  wealth  in  the  old 
days — pinned  their  hopes  on  the  temporary  anti-Bolshevik 
governments  as  they  sprang  up :  on  Yudenitch,  on  Kolchak, 
on  Denikine,  on  Wrangel.  As  these  governments  collapsed 
one  after  another,  the  depression  and  despair  of  the  refugees 
has  been  a  pitiful  thing  to  see.  It  is  a  complete  mystery  to 
me  why  the  once  wealthy  Russians,  as  they  saw  their  wealth 
and  their  homes  wiped  out,  watched  their  loved  ones  going 
hungry  and  cold,  and  found  it  impossible  to  locate  work  of 
any  sort,  did  not  sink  into  the  depths  of  neurasthenia  and 
melancholia.  Singularly  few  of  them,  however,  appear  to 
have  done  so. 

The  second  class  of  refugees  in  Paris — those  who  were 
comfortably  situated  in  Russia  but  did  not  have  independent 


ISO  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

fortunes — were,  up  to  the  first  of  March,  the  most  miserable. 
They  were  unable  to  find  work  in  Paris  which  corresponded 
to  the  work  that  they  had  done  in  Russia.  Most  of  them 
knew  only  the  Russian  language,  so  that  they  could  not  be 
employed  by  French  or  English  firms.  The  engineers  alone 
of  this  class  were  able  to  get  along,  because  their  knowledge 
of  machinery  made  it  possible  for  factory-owners  to  employ 
them  as  manual  laborers.  The  Russian  embassy  in  Paris 
maintains  a  school  for  the  children  of  this  second  class  of 
refugees — though  in  time  it  may  be  enlarged  to  take  in 
more.  It  is  a  poverty-stricken  little  school,  and  a  good  part 
of  the  money  which  makes  it  possible  is  given  by  Americans 
or  French.  The  teachers  are  all  Russian  refugees,  and  they 
are  paid  from  two  hundred  and  fifty  to  five  hundred  francs 
a  month  apiece.  That's  between  twenty  and  thirty  dollars 
a  month,  but  they  say  they  can  get  along  on  it  because  the 
bulk  of  the  school's  money  needs  to  be  spent  for  books. 
This  school  teaches  the  children  enough  French  to  make  it 
possible  for  them  to  get  into  the  French  high  schools.  The 
children  are  given  lunch  at  the  school.  Those  whose  parents 
have  secured  positions  pay  a  hundred  francs  a  month ;  while 
those  whose  parents  can  not  find  work  are  taught  for  noth- 
ing. The  cook  in  the  school  kitchen,  by  the  way,  is  a  Russian 
lady  from  Tambof f.  In  Russia  she  was  extremely  wealthy. 
When  she  and  her  three  children  arrived  in  Paris,  she  was 
penniless.  The  two  littlest  children  are  taught  and  fed  in 
the  school  for  nothing.  The  oldest  daughter,  who  is  sixteen, 
helps  with  the  cooking  and  thus  pays  for  her  lessons.  The 
question  of  education  of  the  Russian  refugee  children  is,  of 
course,  a  very  serious  one,  as  almost  any  family  would  dis- 
cover if,  after  wandering  penniless  around  the  world  for 
many  months,  it  were  dumped  down  in  a  strange  country 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  151 

without  money,  without  friends,  without  text-books  and 
without  any  knowledge  of  the  language  of  the  country 
into  which  it  had  been  dumped. 

The  third  class  of  Paris  refugees — the  skilled  workers — 
had  all  the  work  that  they  wanted  until  the  big  strikes 
occurred  during  the  winter  of  1920.  So  many  French  people 
were  thrown  out  of  work  by  them  that  the  French  naturally 
gave  their  available  positions  to  their  own  people,  and  there 
was  less  and  less  work  for  the  Russians  every  day.  Con- 
sequently all  three  classes  of  Russians  in  Paris  were  in  about 
the  same  fix  by  the  spring  of  1921,  and  the  fix  was  not  one 
which  could  by  any  stretch  of  the  imagination  be  classed  as 
enviable. 

In  my  note-book  I  find  the  following  Parisian  cases, 
fortunate  ones  for  the  most  part,  of  persons  who  were  well 
known  in  old  Russia. 

Count  Hendrickoff  is  about  sixty  years  old.  He  was  a 
wealthy  man  in  Russia,  and  for  forty  years  was  attached 
to  the  Foreign  Office.  He  came  out  after  the  first  revolu- 
tion. Rheumatism  in  his  hands  makes  it  impossible  for  him 
to  work.  The  Russian  embassy  allows  him  the  equivalent  of 
two  dollars  a  week  for  a  place  in  which  to  live;  but  its 
resources  are  so  limited  that  it  can  not  allow  him  more. 
Since  it  can  not,  it  does  not  ask  how  the  count  manages  to 
get  food.  There's  no  use  in  harrowing  one's  mind  with  a 
situation  that  can't  be  remedied. 

Princess  Shakoffskoi  with  her  two  daughters  lives  in  a 
single  room  at  Versailles.  Her  husband  was  killed  by  Bol- 
sheviks. She  lives  by  embroidering  linen,  but  not  too  well. 

Madame  Vesiloffskaia  lived  in  Petrograd,  where  her 
husband  was  in  the  Finance  Ministry,  and  very  wealthy. 
She  has  sold  almost  everything  she  owns  in  order  to  live. 


152  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

She  is  unable  to  get  work.  She  has  two  daughters.  One 
of  them  works  in  a  bank  at  a  very  small  salary.  The  other 
is  ill. 

Princess  Ourousoff  is  happy  and  reasonably  successful 
making  hats  and  embroideries  for  Worth,  the  costumer. 
Princess  Obolensky  has  developed  a  marked  knack  for  mak- 
ing stylish  dresses,  and  has  been  so  successful  at  it  that  she 
has  never  had  to  be  helped.  Princess  Gargarin  is  one  of  the 
social  lights  of  Paris.  She  goes,  as  the  phrase  has  it,  every- 
where ;  and  one  sees  her  name  constantly  in  the  society  col- 
umns of  the  Paris  papers.  Yet  her  only  means  of  support  is 
a  position  in  a  Paris  office  which  pays  her  six  hundred 
francs  a  month,  or  the  equivalent  of  about  five  hundred 
dollars  a  year. 

Though  I  should  rather  dislike  to  say  so  in  the  hearing  of 
any  of  the  Russian  refugees  in  Paris,  the  Paris  refugees  are 
more  fortunately  situated  than  those  in  any  other  part  of 
Europe,  with  the  possible  exceptions  of  London  and  Berlin. 
This  is  because  Paris  is  a  large  city  in  which  the  possibility 
of  work  is  always  present.  The  same  holds  true  of  Berlin 
and  London.  There  is  always  a  possibility  that  a  starving 
refugee  may  find  something  to  do  in  these  places  before  he 
slips  over  the  divide.  This  is  a  thin  possibility  to  dangle 
before  a  starving  man  or  woman ;  but  the  fact  remains  that 
it  is  a  possibility. 

When  one  moves  in  to  Poland,  however,  one  finds  him- 
self in  a  country  where  the  bulk  of  the  population  has  very 
little  decent  food  to  buy,  and  an  insufficient  amount  of 
money  with  which  to  buy  it.  Early  in  1921,  when  I  reached 
Warsaw,  one  received  nine  hundred  and  sixty  Polish  marks 
in  return  for  an  American  dollar,  instead  of  the  normal  rate 
pf  five  marks  for  a  dollar.  One  good  pair  of  women's  shoes 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  153 

cost  from  eight  to  ten  thousand  marks;  and  the  wage  of  a 
waitress  in  a  restaurant  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  six 
hundred  marks  a  month.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  go 
deeper  into  the  economic  situation  to  show  that  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  Russian  refugees  in  Poland,  lacking  money 
and  jobs,  were  in  a  nerve-wracking  position.  It  should 
always  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  people  are  the  only 
wo  rid- wanderers  who  have  no  government  to  which  they 
can  turn.  An  American,  stranded,  jobless,  and  moneyless  in 
a  strange  land,  can  go  to  his  consul ;  and  if  he  deserves  help, 
the  consul  will  get  him  back  to  America  somehow.  The 
Russians  have  no  consuls  to  whom  they  can  go,  and  no  coun- 
try to  which  they  can  return.  They've  got  to  find  work; 
and  if  they  can't  find  work,  they've  got  to  beg  or  die. 

Poland  can't  even  feed  herself.  The  American  Relief 
Administration,  more  familiarly  known  as  the  Hoover 
crowd,  is  daily  feeding  one  million,  one  hundred  thousand 
children  under  fifteen  years  of  age  with  its  usual  energy, 
efficiency  and  lack  of  waste  motion.  Older  persons  must 
shift  for  themselves.  Even  the  Poles  find  the  shifting  very 
difficult;  while  the  Russians,  strangers  in  a  strange  land, 
find  it  more  perplexing  than  any  Einstein  theory.  So 
pitiful  has  been  the  state  of  the  Russians  in  Warsaw  that  the 
American  Relief  Administration  conducted  a  so-called 
"intelligentsia  kitchen"  in  that  city,  and  fed  fifteen  hundred 
adult  refugees  there  each  day — aristocrats,  army  officers, 
professors,  doctors,  lawyers,  actors.  Adults  have  to  be 
pretty  badly  off  when  the  American  Relief  Administration 
provides  food  for  them ;  for  it  is  essentially  a  child-feeding 
organization.  Yet  fifteen  hundred  people  is  a  very  small 
fraction  of  the  whole. 

To  get  in  touch  with  the  Russians  in  Warsaw,  one  goes 


154  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

to  a  hotel  near  the  palace  which,  before  the  war,  was  occupied 
by  the  governor  general  of  Russian  Poland.  On  the  top 
floor  of  the  hotel,  in  a  rather  shabbily  furnished  room  which 
looks  down  on  the  copious  snow-covered  chimney  pots  of  the 
palace,  lives  Madame  Ludmila  Lubimoff,  head  of  the  Rus- 
sian Red  Cross  in  Poland.  Before  the  war,  Madame  Lubi- 
moff lived  in  the  palace  which  she  sees  to-day  from  the  win- 
dows of  her  room ;  for  she  was  the  governor  general's  wife. 
Her  husband  was  a  miniature  czar,  holding  practically 
unlimited  power  over  the  people  under  him.  To-day  he 
acts  as  secretary  for  the  Russian  Red  Cross,  and  is  paid  four 
hundred  marks  a  month,  or  in  the  neighborhood  of  forty- 
five  American  cents.  Every  little  while  he  goes  to  the 
police  and  receives  permission  to  remain  in  Poland;  and  at 
police  headquarters  he  is  always  received  with  respectful 
consideration,  because  he  was  a  very  just  and  kindly  and 
well-liked  governor  general.  Before  he  became  the  gov- 
ernor of  Poland,  he  was  the  governor  of  Vilna  and  what  was 
known  as  a  "palace  master"  or  Hofmeister  of  the  Imperial 
court.  As  for  his  wife,  she  was  a  beautiful  woman, 
whose  influence  was  great  and  far-reaching.  Even  to-day 
she  is  an  unusually  handsome  woman,  with  great  masses  of 
molasses-candy-colored  hair,  and  the  whitest  of  teeth,  and 
eyes  which  squizzle  pleasantly  at  the  corners  when  she  wel- 
comes the  old  friends  who  drop  in  on  her  for  sympathy — 
and  help :  such  people,  for  example,  as  the  former  governors 
of  Russia's  greatest  provinces  and  former  Imperial  Guard 
officers,  and  counts  and  barons  and  princes  whose  names 
were  known  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Empire. 
Madame  Lubimoff  herself,  by  the  way,  was  born  a  princess, 
and  was  what  the  English-speaking  Russians  usually  speak 
of  as  "reech,  reech  and  reech" — which  seems  to  be  their 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  155 

invariable  manner  of  emphasizing  richness.  When  she  and 
her  husband  fled  from  Petrograd,  she  saved  a  larger  amount 
of  jewels  than  most  fleeing  Russians  were  able  to  save. 
This  was  due  to  the  assistance  of  the  Persian  consul  in 
Petrograd.  This  gentleman,  who  was  a  Pole  although  he 
represented  Persia,  sent  her  jewels  to  Finland  by  courier. 
Consequently  she  and  her  husband  can  exist  for  another  five 
or  six  years  by  selling  now  a  jewel  and  again  a  jewel.  They 
must  live  frugally  in  one  room,  and  they  can  eat  only  the 
simplest  fare  if  the  jewels  are  to  last  that  long.  When  they 
are  gone,  there  will  be  nothing. 

Madame  Lubimoff  was  somewhat  delayed  in  her  get- 
away from  Soviet  Russia  by  the  fact  that  her  husband  was 
languishing  in  a  Bolshevik  jail  awaiting  execution.  One 
day  she  was  called  to  the  telephone.  When  she  answered,  a 
man's  voice  asked  whether  she  were  Ludmila  Lubimoff.  She 
replied  that  she  was,  whereupon  a  female  voice  took  up  the 
conversation.  It  proved  to  be  the  voice  of  a  lady  with  whom 
Madame  Lubimoff  had  gone  to  school  many  years  before — 
one  Angelik  Balabanoff,  who  is  one  of  the  most  notorious 
Bolsheviks  in  all  Soviet  Russia.  In  addition  to  being  men- 
tally en  rapport  with  the  Bolshevik  leaders,  she  is  bodily 
en  rapport  with  a  number  of  them  as  well.  One  might,  in 
fact,  call  her  the  star  rapporter  of  the  Bolshevik  govern- 
ment. Some  time  since  she  made  a  sensational  trip  to 
France  and  back  to  Russia  again  without  passport  or 
vises — a  fact  which  caused  the  French  government  much 
anguish.  Balabanoff  had  just  learned  of  Madame  Lubi- 
moff's  presence  in  Petrograd.  "You  will  be  surprised."  she 
said  to  Madame  Lubimoff,  after  the  two  had  hysterically 
voiced  their  delight  at  hearing  each  other's  voice  after 
so  many  years,  "you  will  be  surprised  when  you  hear 


156  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  name  of  the  man  who  asked  for  you  over  the  telephone 
just  now."  Madame  Lubimoff  at  once  stated  that  she  was 
consumed  by  curiosity.  "It  was  Trotsky,"  declared  Bala- 
banoff.  "He  is  here  at  my  apartment  and  he  telephoned  to 
oblige  me."  "If  he  is  so  willing,  then,  to  oblige  you,"  replied 
Madame  Lubimoff,  "ask  him  to  oblige  you  further  by  hav- 
ing my  husband  released  from  jail."  And  on  the  following 
day  Madame  Lubimoff  received  an  order,  signed  by  Trotsky, 
releasing  her  husband.  She  at  once  sold  enough  jewels  to 
purchase  a  false  passport  stating  that  her  husband  had  per- 
mission to  go  to  the  Ukraine  to  buy  leather.  And  so  they 
came  out  into  Poland  together. 

Madame  Lubimoff,  as  I  said  before,  is  head  of  the  Rus- 
sian Red  Cross  in  Poland,  and  it  is  a  very  fortunate  thing 
for  the  Russian  refugees  that  this  should  be  so.  Late  in 
1920  the  Central  Office  of  the  Russian  Red  Cross  in  Paris 
ordered  her  to  discontinue  the  activities  of  the  Russian  Red 
Cross  in  Poland  because  of  lack  of  funds.  Instead  of  dis- 
continuing, she  enlarged  her  field  of  activities.  "I  could  not 
stop,"  she  told  me.  "These  are  my  people  and  they  were 
dying."  So  she  hustles  around  all  day,  this  woman  who  was 
"reech,  reech  and  reech"  a  few  years  ago,  and  the  first  lady 
of  that  section  of  the  land  in  which  she  is  now  doing  her 
hustling.  She  looks  after  the  workshops  which  she  has 
started,  and  the  feeding  stations  which  are  keeping  her 
people  from  starvation,  and  the  dispensaries  which  look 
after  the  sick;  and  in  her  spare  moments  she  tears  around 
to  the  Americans  or  the  Poles  or  any  one  at  all  and  begs  for 
more.  She  has  become  a  very  accomplished  beggar,  and 
is  not  discouraged  by  rebuffs.  If  she  can  not  get  a  case  of 
condensed  milk  for  a  kitchen,  she  will  gladly  take  two  cans. 
And  if  she  can  not  get  an  automobile  load  of  cloth  for  a 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  157 

workshop,  she  wouldn't  think  of  scorning  half  a  dozen  pairs 
of  pajamas  which  her  workshops  can  make  into  shirts, 
plucking  out  each  thread  and  cunningly  recutting  them.  It 
was  pleasant  to  hear  the  relief  workers  putting  her  on  the 
griddle,  as  one  might  say.  "Darn  her,"  they'd  say,  "she's 
an  awful  nuisance!  Asking  for  a  sack  of  flour,  and  if  you 
haven't  got  it,  asking  for  half  a  sack  or  a  quarter  of  a  sack ! 
You  want  to  look  out  for  that  woman !  Don't  go  near  her 
or  she'll  ask  you  for  money  sure  as  shooting.  Yes,  sir! 
Come  right  out  and  ask  you  for  it !  Can't  hold  on  to  a  cent 
while  she's  around,  darn  her!"  Very  ferocious  and  con- 
temptuous, these  young  men  were;  and  the  next  morning 
they'd  scratch  their  heads  meditatively,  and  privately  figure 
out  some  way  whereby  they  could  send  her  a  little  more  flour 
or  a  little  more  milk  or  maybe  even  a  few  Polish  marks. 
They're  a  terrible  lot  of  cynics  and  hard-boiled  eggs,  these 
relief  workers  of  ours. 

The  main  idea  behind  all  of  Madame  Lubimoff's  efforts 
is  the  foundation  of  workshops  for  Russian  refugees  which 
shall  pay  for  themselves  and  clear  enough  profit  to  feed  the 
people  who  can't  work.  She  has  a  working  colony  of  three 
hundred  skilled  workmen  out  at  Sulejuwek,  near  Warsaw. 
All  of  these  workmen  are  specialists  in  such  things  as  fine 
leather  work,  fine  brass  work,  the  making  of  Russian  enamel 
and  so  on.  They  make  only  beautiful  things,  and  the  market 
for  all  that  they  make  is  a  large  and  eager  one.  Then  there 
are  two  big  sewing  shops  employing  three  hundred  women 
and  equipped  with  twenty  American  sewing-machines  which 
were  the  gift  of  Americans.  When  I  was  in  Warsaw,  this 
shop  was  working  on  the  remaking  of  hospital  shirts  which 
had  been  given  to  the  Russians  by  the  American  Red  Cross 
on  the  condition  that  they  be  remade.  Every  stitch  on  the 


158  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

hospital  shirts  was  picked  out,  and  the  pieces  were  recut  and 
resewed  so  that  they  made  very  natty  shirts  for  street  wear. 
In  one  month  this  shop  had  shown  a  profit  of  one  hundred 
thousand  marks,  because  the  shirts  produced  by  it  were 
eagerly  snapped  up.  The  boss  of  the  shirt  factory  is  Princess 
Meschersky.  Meschersky  is  a  great  name  in  Russia;  and 
when  the  Bolsheviks  ran  the  princess  out  of  Russia,  they  lost 
a  good  forewoman.  Prince  Meschersky  used  to  be  Russian 
consul  general  in  Shanghai ;  but  in  Warsaw  he  couldn't  get 
a  job.  Finally  the  Russian  Red  Cross  let  him  peel  potatoes 
in  return  for  his  food;  so  he  peels  diligently  every  day,  and 
eats  heartily,  and  seems  remarkably  contented  with  his  lot. 
Probably  he  bears  in  mind  how  much  more  unpleasant  it 
would  have  been  if  he  couldn't  have  anything  to  eat. 

The  women  who  work  in  the  sewing  shops  are  paid  one 
hundred  and  fifty  Polish  marks  a  day,  and  are  given  three 
meals  a  day  for  which  they  are  charged  thirty  marks.  The 
Polish  mark,  at  the  time  of  which  I  write,  stood  at  nine  hun- 
dred and  sixty  marks  for  the  dollar.  The  lunch  at  these 
workshops  costs  the  Russian  Red  Cross  twenty-two  marks 
a  person,  and  is  sold  for  ten  marks.  A  modest  dinner  for 
four  people  at  either  of  the  two  good  Warsaw  hotels,  at  the 
same  period,  cost  between  three  and  four  thousand  marks. 

There  are  refugee  shops  where  invalids  make  toys :  oth- 
ers where  neat  kitchen  utensils  are  fashioned  out  of  old  tin 
cans  furnished  by  the  American  Red  Cross  and  the  American 
Relief  Administration.  These  shops  make  fine  lamps  out 
of  discarded  cans,  for  example,  which  are  sold  for  seventy- 
five  marks  in  the  Russian  Red  Cross  sales  rooms;  whereas 
an  exactly  similar  lamp  in  the  public  markets  costs  one 
hundred  and  fifty  marks.  Other  shops  make  clothes  and 
;  sweaters  out  of  the  wool  furnished  by  the  American  Red 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  159 

Cross.  At  the  sales  rooms  one  can  buy  a  sweater  for  nine 
hundred  marks;  a  blouse  for  a  thousand  marks;  a  suit  for 
four  thousand  marks  and  an  overcoat  for  five  thousand 
marks — or  a  toy  windmill  for  ten  marks.  In  two  months' 
time  at  the  beginning  of  1921,  the  shops  took  in  four  million 
marks,  and  their  expenses  were  two  million  marks.  It  is  by 
such  means  that  Madame  Lubimoff  hopes  to  redeem  the 
refugees  of  Poland.  She  has  thousands  of  names  on  file 
at  her  headquarters;  and  each  one  of  them  wants,  but  can 
not  get,  work.  "It  is  my  fear,"  said  Madame  Lubimoff  to 
me,  "that  the  American  Red  Cross  may  make  an  end  of 
giving  to  the  Russians,  and  I  spend  all  my  days  hunting  and 
hoping  for  machines  and  tools,  so  that  more  and  more  of 
our  people  can  have  work.  It  is  all  they  ask :  work.  The 
Poles  can  not  give  to  us,  for  they  are  only  existing  like 
little  children  who  are  learning  to  stand  on  their  feet.  If 
you  will  ask  your  people  for  machines  or  for  tools  for  these 
Russian  people — even  one  machine  or  one  hoe  is  better  than 
none  at  all — I  beg  that  you  will  ask  your  people  for  such 
things.  We  are  all  very  great  beggars  now.  I  am  sorry  that 

it  is  so It  was  not  always  so Just  machines 

for  sewing  or  for  working  in  the  ground " 

Let  us  look  at  some  of  the  Russians  in  Warsaw.  Here, 
for  one,  is  Prince  Outomsky,  who  was  widely  known  in 
Russia  as  a  patron  of  the  arts.  He  was  one  of  the 
wealthiest  men  in  that  very  wealthy  city;  and  to  his  salon 
came  the  greatest  artists  and  authors  and  actors  in  the 
Empire.  The  Russian  Red  Cross,  learning  that  he  was  in 
unfortunate  circumstances,  hunted  him  up.  They  found  him 
and  Princess  Outomsky  occupying  one-half  of  a  tiny  room ; 
and  their  half  was  set  off  from  the  other  half  by  a  curtain  of 
torn  and  ancient  cloth.  The  two  of  them  were  making 


160  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

cigarettes  as  rapidly  as  they  could ;  for  if  they  worked  very 
rapidly  all  the  day  they  were  able  to  earn  as  much  as  twenty 
marks  a  day.  The  investigator  who  hunted  them  up  had 
belonged  to  a  great  family  in  Petrograd  and  had  known  the 
prince  in  the  days  of  his  wealth.  "When  I  came  to  the 
room,"  she  told  me,  "this  man  began  to  cry  quite  like  a 
child."  They  had  been  reduced  to  such  extremes  of  poverty 
and  hunger  that  he  had  begged  on  street  corners.  They 
were  taken  to  the  Red  Cross  kitchens  and  put  to  work.  The 
princess  started  as  a  waitress,  and  was  then  elevated  to  the 
position  of  cashier;  and  between  them  they  now  earn  four 
thousand  marks  a  month,  or  the  equivalent  of  four  dollars. 
"They  are  now  quite  happy,"  said  my  informant,  "for  they 
feel  that  they  do  something  for  their  people."  Prince 
Outomsky  has  large  estates  in  Poland;  but  they  have  been 
requisitioned  by  the  Polish  government,  as  have  the  Polish 
estates  of  many  other  Russian  refugees.  Sometime,  when 
things  are  running  smoothly,  says  the  Polish  government, 
the  Russians  may  be  paid  for  the  things  that  have  been  taken 
from  them. 

Madame  Kaswoffsky  owns  very  large  estates  in  Poland, 
but  she  is  doing  office  work  for  the  Russian  Red  Cross  for 
twenty-eight  hundred  marks  a  month  and  her  dinner  each 
day  because  her  estates  have  been  seized  and  she  has  nothing 
else.  The  seizing  of  the  estates  of  Russians  has  had  some 
queer  results.  The  Bolsheviks  robbed  Prince  Mirsky  of  his 
estate  near  Minsk.  He  therefore  organized  a  band  of 
guerrilla  fighters  and  robbed  his  own  home  of  his  own 
belongings. 

Three  miles  out  from  Warsaw  in  a  two-room  hut  at  the 
edge  of  a  forest  lives  a  Russian  gentleman  named  Oblonsky, 
who  was  the  architect  of  the  Imperial  palaces  in  Petrograd. 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  161 

He  has  now  secured  a  position  as  forester,  and  regulates  the 
cutting  down  of  trees  and  the  disposition  of  faggots.  His 
wife  was  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks.  He  has  six  children. 
The  eldest  is  sixteen  years  old  and  has  a  lame  leg.  Never- 
theless this  boy  walks  into  Warsaw  each  morning  and  spends 
the  day  making  tin  cups  out  of  condensed  milk  cans.  When 
he  has  finished  making  cups,  he  goes  to  a  Russian  school, 
which  keeps  him  fairly  busy  until  eight  o'clock  at  night. 
Then  he  can  relax  and  enjoy  life;  so  he  gets  Red  Cross  food 
for  his  five  brothers  and  sisters  and  limps  out  along  the 
frozen  roads  to  the  little  hut  in  the  forest. 

There  is  a  waitress  in  the  Red  Cross  kitchens  named 
Stahl-von-Holdstein.  She  is  a  baroness,  and  is  the  daughter 
of  one  of  the  wealthiest  land-owners  of  old  Russia.  In  the 
words  of  the  Russians,  she  was  "reech,  reech,  reech  as 
millions."  Her  husband,  the  baron,  used  to  be  commandant 
of  Peter  and  Paul  Fortress  in  Petrograd.  Her  home  was  a 
very  beautiful  one,  and  after  the  revolution  an  offer  of 
three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  English  pounds  was  made 
for  it.  She  accepted ;  but  instead  of  getting  three  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  English  pounds,  she  received  a  million 
Soviet  roubles,  which  is  something  else  again.  In  fact, 
almost  any  Bolshevik  would  be  highly  delighted  to  exchange 
a  million  Soviet  roubles  for  three  dollars  to-day,  and  their 
actual  value  is  the  worth  of  the  waste  paper  on  which  they 
are  printed.  The  baron  and  the  baroness  and  their  three 
children  came  across  the  frontier  in  peasant  clothes.  They 
haven't  a  penny  to  their  names  except  the  Polish  marks  that 
the  baroness  earns  by  waiting  on  table. 

The  shirt  factory  of  the  Russian  Red  Cross  has  an 
expert  needlewoman  in  the  person  of  Madame  Herschel- 
mann,  wife  of  the  General  Herschelmann  who  was  gover- 


162  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

nor  general  of  Moscow  and  later  commander  of  the  army 
in  the  Vilna  district.  Three  days  before  I  reached  Warsaw 
last  winter,  Madame  Herschelmann  arrived  there  in  rags 
with  her  nineteen-year-old  daughter.  They  had  started  from 
Oranienbaum,  which  is  near  Petrograd,  for  Finland;  and 
to  the  person  who  had  undertaken  to  get  them  into  Finland 
they  had  paid  thirty  thousand  Finnish  marks.  The  Finns 
caught  them,  however ;  and  as  the  border  was  closed  to  Rus- 
sians at  that  time  and  as  they  had  no  permission  to  enter, 
they  were  put  back  across  the  border.  The  Soviet  border 
guard  immediately  arrested  them.  Madame  Herschelmann 
had  a  few  diamonds  hidden  in  her  clothes.  With  most  of 
these  she  bought  her  freedom.  She  immediately  tried  the 
same  means  of  escape  once  more,  selling  the  remainder  of 
her  diamonds  and  her  only  good  clothes  in  order  to  get  the 
thirty  thousand  Finnish  marks.  On  the  second  attempt  she 
and  her  daughter  were  successful;  and  from  Finland  they 
begged  and  tramped  and  fought  their  way  to  Warsaw.  The 
daughter  has  a  clerical  position  in  a  warehouse,  where  she 
earns  fifteen  hundred  marks  a  month.  Madame  Herschel- 
mann is  paid  eighty  marks  a  day — or  about  eight  American 
cents — for  her  shirt-making. 

In  the  kitchen  which  cooks  American  Relief  Administra- 
tion food  for  Russian  refugee  children  there  is  a  cook  named 
Madame  Koudraftseff.  This  lady  was  the  wife  of  the  vice- 
mayor  of  Petrograd.  He  was  arrested  and  put  in  prison 
after  the  revolution;  and  on  one  very  cold  winter  night  an 
order  was  issued  that  he  should  be  moved  to  another  prison 
about  three  miles  distant  from  the  one  he  was  in.  The 
guards  started  with  him,  but  the  cold  was  so  intense  that 
they  chose  an  easier  way — they  shot  him  and  threw  him  in 
the  Neva.  His  wife,  who  has  four  small  children,  was  men- 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  163 

tally  unbalanced  by  the  shock,  and  remained  so  for  five 
months.  She  then  fled  from  Petrograd  and  ultimately 
came  to  Warsaw,  where  she  and  her  four  children  have  been 
fortunate  enough  to  find  the  half  of  a  room  in  which  to  live. 

As  I  said  before,  few  of  them  die  from  the  horrors  and 
hardships  through  which  they  pass,  but  many  of  them  are 
mentally  affected.  In  Warsaw,  for  example,  is  General 
Prigoroffsky,  who  commanded  an  army  corps  in  the  Great 
War.  He  had  more  decorations  for  bravery  and  service, 
say  the  Russians,  than  almost  any  other  officer;  and  he  was 
very  wealthy.  His  son  was  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks  under 
particularly  unpleasant  circumstances,  and  the  general  was 
unable  to  locate  the  body.  He  consequently  has  what  is 
known  as  the  idee  fixe,  and  insists  on  asking  all  people 
whom  he  meets  whether  they  know  where  he  can  locate  his 
son.  He  goes  up  and  down  the  streets  of  Warsaw  asking 
this  question.  For  that  reason  it  is  impossible  to  get  work 
for  him.  He  can  not  get  his  mind  off  his  son. 

Then  there  is  Senator  Ragowich  and  his  wife  and  daugh- 
ter. Senator  Ragowich  was  governor  of  the  District  of 
Kovno  at  one  time,  and  he  was  also  minister  of  religion; 
and,  he,  too,  was  "reech,  reech  and  reech."  The  senator's 
wife  was  born  a  princess.  He  now  works  as  a  laborer  in  a 
warehouse,  while  his  wife  cooks  and  does  laundry-work. 
The  daughter  was  one  of  the  attendants  of  the  czarina.  Her 
brother  was  killed  by  the  Bolsheviks;  and  now — to  quote 
my  interpreter — "all  the  day  she  is  quite  mad,  doing  a  dress 
during  the  daytime  and  undoing  the  stitches  during  the 
night-time."  She  is  a  very  pretty  girl,  this  mad  daughter 
of  the  Ragowichs,  and  is  only  nineteen  years  old. 

One  finds  strange  mixtures  among  these  refugees,  and 
as  much  democracy  among  aristocrats  as  even  the  Bol- 


164  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

sheviks,  with  their  "Comrade  This"  and  "Comrade  That," 
can  show.  The  Russian  Red  Cross  has  a  dining-room  at 
its  headquarters,  and  among  the  waitresses  are  Princess 
Rukoff,  whose  husband,  Admiral  Rukoff,  was  executed  by 
the  Bolsheviks,  and  two  young  women  whose  father,  named 
Juzaffsky,  was  butler  to  the  czar,  and  went  with  him  to 
Tobolsk  when  the  Bolsheviks  took  him  there.  Likewise,  in 
the  shirt-making  shop,  working  with  Princess  Meschersky, 
is  the  wife  of  Denisoff,  who  was  one  of  the  many  coach- 
men of  the  czar. 

An  army  of  nine  thousand  men,  known  as  "Wrangel's 
Third  Army,"  was  formed  from  Russians  in  Poland  by  Gen- 
eral Permikin,  the  idea  being  that  it  should  advance  through 
Kiev  to  Odessa  and  go  to  Wrangel's  assistance.  It  never 
got  to  him,  however,  and  it  is  now  interned  in  camps  in  the 
cities  of  Ostroff,  Thorn  and  Lukof f.  These  men  are  in  very 
bad  shape,  and  have  little  food  and  practically  no  clothes. 
A  great  many  of  the  officers  can  not  leave  their  beds  in  the 
daytime,  because  their  clothes  are  entirely  worn  out,  and 
they  can  get  no  others.  There  is  a  Russian  Political  Com- 
mittee in  Poland  which  is  working  for  the  relief  of  these 
men,  and  at  the  head  of  it  is  a  man  named  Boris  Savinkoff. 
Savinkoff,  under  the  old  regime,  was  regarded  as  a  wild 
revolutionary;  but  the  Bolsheviks  consider  him  a  dangerous 
reactionary  and  are  very  fretful  at  the  Poles  for  harboring 
him.  It  was  Savinkoff  who  organized  the  men  who  assas- 
sinated the  Grand  Duke  Serge  and  Plehve,  Minister  of  the 
Interior.  He  was  very  much  "wanted"  under  the  old 
regime;  and  one  of  the  men  who  was  pounding  along  on 
his  trail  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night  was  Governor 
Lubimoff.  Lubimoff  used  to  ransack  every  corner  of 
Petrograd  for  him.  Savinkoff  was  a  dear  friend  of  Marshal 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  165 

Pilsudski,  Chief  of  State  of  Poland  to-day;  for  Pilsudski 
was  an  ardent  hater  of  the  old  Russian  regime  and  a  con- 
stant worker  to  free  Poland  from  Russian  rule.  Savinkoff 
and  Pilsudski,  in  fact,  were  what  might  be  called  old  prison 
chums ;  for  both  of  them  had  frequently  been  jugged,  so  to 
speak,  together,  and  had  a  wide  and  intimate  knowledge  of 
the  interiors  of  the  leading  Russian  jails.  So  it  was  only 
reasonable  that  Pilsudski,  as  Chief  of  State  of  Poland, 
should  put  Savinkoff  at  the  head  of  the  committee  to  look 
after  an  interned  Russian  army.  Politicians  must  stick 
together. 

But  in  this  position,  Savinkoff  is  obliged  to  work  almost 
daily  with  Madame  Lubimoff,  head  of  the  Russian  Red 
Cross ;  and  when  they  so  work,  the  secretary  who  takes  down 
the  minutes  of  the  proceedings  is  Monsieur  Lubimoff,  whose 
sleuth-hounds  used  to  bay  ferociously  at  Savinkoff's  heels. 
It  is  a  rare  situation.  "I  must  help  this  army,"  declared 
Madame  Lubimoff,  squizzling  her  eyes  at  me,  "but  I  am 
quite  shocked  that  I  must  speak  with  this  man." 

I  went  up  to  Madame  Lubimoff's  room  one  afternoon 
for  some  information  regarding  refugees.  The  woman  who 
opened  the  door  to  me,  and  who  brings  tea  for  callers  and 
takes  their  wraps,  and  by  so  doing  earns  just  enough  marks 
each  day  to  keep  her  from  starvation,  is  the  wife  of  the 
former  assistant  manager  of  the  Warsaw  post-office,  when 
Warsaw  was  under  the  Russians.  I  was  followed  by  a  meek- 
looking  gentleman  in  a  rusty  black  suit,  and  soon  learned 
that  it  was  Mr.  Gilchin,  the  governor  of  Bessarabia,  who 
now  acts  as  messenger  boy  for  a  Polish  firm,  and  is  very 
glad  for  a  monthly  food-packet  from  the  American  Relief 
Administration.  Directly  behind  Mr.  Gilchin  came  another 
meek-looking  gentleman  who  proved  to  be  Colonel  Kessa- 


166  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

laeff,  a  former  Imperial  Guards  officer,  now  acting  as 
errand-boy  for  the  Russian  Red  Cross.  On  being  introduced 
to  a  bevy  of  such  people,  one  can  not  help  but  feel  that  he 
is  in  a  mad-house,  and  is  frequently  inclined  to  enter  into 
the  spirit  of  the  occasion  by  declaring  loudly  that  he  is 
Oliver  Cromwell  or  Alexander  the  Great. 

A  young  woman  came  to  the  door  while  I  was  talking  to 
Madame  Lubimoff  and  asked  a  question.  Madame  Lubi- 
moff  went  to  a  drawer  and  took  out  a  package.  "A  Rus- 
sian lady,"  she  said  to  me,  "fled  from  Petrograd  with  noth- 
ing but  a  pocketful  of  beads.  With  these,  on  the  way,  she 
knitted  a  beautiful  bead  bag,  and  now  she  wishes  to  sell  it 
so  that  she  may  have  something  to  eat.  But  she  asks  such  a 
great  price  for  it  that  I  fear  she  can  not  sell  it."  And  she 
thereupon  handed  the  package  to  the  young  woman  with 
expressions  of  regret.  I  asked  to  see  it.  It  was  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  bead  bags  that  I  have  seen  in  all  my  travels 
through  the  bead  bag  centers  of  Central  Europe;  and  the 
stupendous  and  overwhelming  price  that  the  maker  was 
asking  for  it  was  eight  thousand  Polish  marks — which  at 
that  day's  rate  of  exchange,  amounted  to  little  more  than 
eight  dollars  to  an  American.  I  told  Madame  Lubimoff  that 
I  could  surely  get  one  of  the  Americans  at  the  Hotel  Bristol 
to  buy  it  if  the  girl  cared  to  leave  it  with  me;  and  with  that 
she  opened  another  drawer  in  her  desk  and  drew  out  a  silver 
plate  a  foot  in  diameter,  encrusted  on  the  face  with  designs 
in  Moscow  enamel.  Engraved  on  the  back  was  an  inscrip- 
tion stating  that  the  plate  was  the  gift  of  the  Grand  Duchess 
Anastasia  to  the  Mother  Superior  of  a  Moscow  convent  on  a 
certain  important  anniversary  in  1913.  The  plate  was 
almost  as  heavy  as  a  frying  pan.  It  was  the  most  treasured 
possession  of  that  Mother  Superior,  and  the  only  thing  that 


WAIFS  OF  AN  EMPIRE  167 

she  had  been  able  to  carry  with  her  when  she  fled  from 
Moscow.  She  had  reached  Warsaw  in  a  pitiful  state  of 
poverty  about  two  weeks  previous,  and  had  turned  the  plate 
over  to  Madame  Lubimoff  to  be  sold.  Madame  Lubimoff 
didn't  seem  to  know  the  price  which  she  should  ask  for  it, 
so  the  servant — the  wife  of  the  assistant  manager  of  the 
Warsaw  post-office — was-  sent  out  to  a  jewelry  store  to  have 
it  valued.  She  came  back  and  said  that  the  jeweler  had 
offered  twelve  thousand  marks  for  it — twelve  dollars  for  a 
plate  worth  more  than  two  hundred!  I  suggested  that 
Madame  Lubimoff  have  it  properly  valued,  so  that  I  might 
be  able  to  help  sell  it,  but  I  heard  no  more  of  it.  This  illus- 
trates, however,  the  cutthroat  prices  for  which  destitute 
Russians  who  have  managed  to  escape  with  small  treasures 
of  jewels  or  plate  or  furs  are  obliged  to  seJl  their  belongings 
when  the  pinch  of  hunger  or  cold  or  sickness  becomes  too 
great  to  be  borne.  One  hears  remarkable  tales,  in  Europe, 
of  diamond  tiaras  bought  from  Russians  for  five  or  six 
hundred  dollars;  of  sable  coats  sold  for  the  equivalent  of 
fifty  dollars ;  of  gorgeous  emeralds  purchased  from  helpless 
refugees  for  the  price  of  a  decent  meal  for  four  people.  I 
have  never  happened  to  encounter  people  who  had  made 
these  remarkable  purchases,  and  I  should  think  that  those 
who  made  them  would  be  as  reluctant  to  tell  of  them  as  they 
would  be  to  boast  of  stealing  pennies  from  a  dead  man's 
eyes.  All  of  my  information  concerning  them  has  been  third 
or  fourth  or  fifth  hand,  and  consequently  worth  very  little. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  a  great  many  of  the  stories  are  true; 
and  it  is  a  fact  that  in  almost  any  European  city  one  can 
buy  jewels  sold  originally  by  Russian  refugees,  which  have 
passed  through  four  and  five  hands  and  yielded  a  handsome 
profit  to  each  purchaser,  and  which  can  still  be  purchased  at 


i68  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

a  far  cheaper  price  than  they  could  be  purchased  in  America. 
It  is  also  a  fact  that  there  are  a  lot  of  cheap  traders  from 
Galicia  and  the  Levant  in  every  part  of  Europe  who  pre- 
tend to  have  Russian  refugee  jewels  at  one-tenth  of  their 
value,  and  who  are  feathering  their  nests  handsomely  by 
palming  off  flawed  diamonds  and  paste  pearls  and  phony 
sables  and  platinum  with  the  accent  on  the  tin  on  gullible 
Englishmen  and  Americans  and  other  kindly  but  avaricious 
boobs  from  the  outlands. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  lawyers  from  Kiev,  Mr. 
Riekshensky,  plodded  into  Warsaw  not  long  ago  in  a  ragged 
suit  and  with  no  shoes  or  stockings  or  underclothing.    Just 
before  he  left  Kiev  the  Bolsheviks  killed  his  sister.    He  is 
working  in  an  American  Red  Cross  warehouse......  He 

has  twenty  Imperial  Guard  officers  working  under  him 

The  former  governor  of  Novgorod  holds  the  keys 

of  the  pantry  of  the  Russian  Red  Cross  Kitchen  and  doles 
out  the  meager  supplies. ......  Colonel  Ivanoff  chops  wood 

for  a  relief  dining-room Mr.  Javorsky,  one  of 

Petrograd's  leading  comedians,  hands  out  checks  in  the  same 
dining-room 

And  so  it  goes  in  England,  in  Switzerland,  in  Turkey,  in 
Finland,  in  Hungary,  in  Egypt,  in  Germany,  in  Tunis,  in 
Italy — all  over  the  civilized  world.  Like  dead  leaves,  these 
people  have  drifted  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  earth;  and 
there  they  lie,  some  in  heaps  and  windrows,  and  some  still 
drifting  helplessly  before  the  wind.  The  scum  of  Europe 
pours  to  America  by  every  ship  with  comparative  ease;  but 
the  Russians  must  move  heaven  and  earth  and  the  State 
Department  before  they  can  go.  Of  all  the  sad  spectacles 
which  I  have  seen  among  the  wreckage  left  by  the  war,  the 
spectacle  of  the  Russian  refugees  is  the  saddest. 


The  Constantinople  Refugees 

LET  us  do  some  supposing,  in  order  that  the  main  fea- 
tures- of  the  ensuing  narrative  may  be  firmly  fixed  in  our 
minds. 

The  city  of  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  at  the  last  census, 
had  a  population  of  some  one  hundred  and  fifty-nine  thou- 
sand men,  women  and  children.  It  is  pleasantly  situated  on 
Long  Island  Sound,  so  that  it  can  be  entered  and  left  by 
water  with  reasonable  ease.  It  is  the  seat  of  a  university 
which  has  a  wide  reputation  for  excellence,  and  is  conse- 
quently inhabited  by  more  persons  of  wealth  and  distinc- 
tion than  one  would  usually  find  in  a  city  of  its  size.  It 
is  also  the  seat  of  a  large  number  of  factories  of  various 
sorts;  and  as  a  result  it  is  well  stocked  with  young  men  of 
military  age.  At  certain  periods  of  the  year,  because  of  the 
athletic  prowess  of  sundry  students  in  the  university,  several 
thousand  persons  of  varying  degree  of  fame,  wealth  and 
social  prominence  travel  to  New  Haven  from  every  part  of 
America  in  the  hope  of  seeing  the  athletes  of  the  university 
administer  a  violent  and  enthusiastic  walloping  to  the 
athletes  of  another  university,  or  of  seeing  them  violently 
and  enthusiastically  walloped,  as  the  case  may  be ;  or  because 
they  consider  it  the  smart  and  fashionable  thing  to  do. 

Let  us  now  step  on  the  accelerators  of  our  supposers,  so 
to  speak,  and  suppose  that  on  a  crisp  November  noon,  just 

169 


i/o  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

as  the  last  trainloads  of  pilgrims  were  disembarking  in  New 
Haven  to  witness  one  of  these  notable  athletic  wallopings, 
word  should  be  received  in  the  city  that  an  unexpected 
revolution  had  taken  place  in  the  surrounding  cities,  and  that 
the  revolutionists  were  marching  on  New  Haven  with  the 
avowed  intention  of  wiping  out  of  existence  all  persons  of 
wealth,  all  persons  of  high  social  position,  all  persons  of 
education,  and  all  persons  suspected  of  being  antagonistic  to 
the  revolutionists.  All  railroad  and  trolley  lines  had  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  revolutionists :  all  roads  leading  out  of 
the  city  had  been  barricaded  by  them;  every  possibility  of 
relief  had  been  cut  off;  and  the  only  remaining  avenue  of 
escape  left  for  the  terrified  thousands  in  New  Haven  was  the 
sea. 

Let  us  suppose,  therefore,  that  every  available  vessel  in 
the  vicinity  of  New  Haven  and  every  vessel  which  could  be 
reached  by  wireless  was  brought  into  harbor :  war-ships  and 
destroyers  and  passenger  steamers  and  freight  steamers; 
ferry-boats  of  ancient  vintage ,  and  excursion  steamers  in  the 
throes  of  senile  decay,  and  private  yachts  in  various  stages 
of  decrepitude,  and  coal  barges  impregnated  to  the  satura- 
tion point  with  coal-dust;  trawlers  and  tugs  and  towboats 
and  tubs  of  every  description.  Into  these  vessels  piled  the 
residents  of  New  Haven  and  the  strangers  within  the  city's 
gates:  men,  women  and  children;  millionaires  and  factor}' 
workers  and  factory  owners  and  society  leaders  and  students 
and  clerks;  doctors  and  lawyers  and  judges  and  university 
professors  and  school-teachers  and  bankers  and  editors  and 
reporters  and  all  the  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  that  go  to 
make  up  the  population  of  a  large  and  flourishing  city.  They 
lined  the  water-front  in  solid  masses;  and  the  ships  worked 
in  to  the  docks,  took  passengers  aboard  until  they  were 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        171 

crammed  with  humanity,  and  then  worked  out  into  the  har- 
bor to  make  room  for  other  ships.  The  ships  were  stuffed 
with  people  until  it  was  literally  impossible  for  another  per- 
son to  find  a  resting-place  aboard  them.  They  were  so 
jammed  on  the  decks  and  between  decks  that  there  was  no 
space  for  them  to  lie  down  or  even  sit  down;  and  so  they 
stood  in  their  places  while  the  ships  lay  in  harbor  and  after 
they  steamed  out  of  the  harbor  and  until  they  came  to  where 
they  were  going.  They  slept  standing  up,  for  there  was  no 
room  to  lie  down,  and  they  had  nothing  to  eat  or  drink ;  and 
by  the  grace  of  God  the  sea  was  calm  and  the  days  and  nights 
were  warm;  for  if  the  weather  had  been  otherwise,  these 
people  would  have  died  like  flies  in  an  autumn  frost. 

Let  us  further  suppose  that  since  all  of  the  other  cities 
along  the  American  coast  had  been  seized  by  the  revolu- 
tionists, the  ships-  bearing  all  the  residents  of  New  Haven 
stood  straight  out  to  sea  for  a  matter  of  two  or  three  days, 
and  finally  arrived  at  the  small  and  isolated  Bermuda 
Islands.  And  let  us  finally  suppose  that  these  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  people,  more  or  less,  were  set  down  in 
Bermuda,  where  there  was  no  work  and  no  escape  and  little 
accommodation  for  them,  and  that  they  dwelt  there  in  tents 
and  in  holes  in  the  ground  and  in  huts  and  in  old  barracks — 
millionaires  and  bankers  and  Yale  students  and  factory 
workers  and  society  leaders — and  that  they  lived  on  the 
bounty  of  the  English  for  months  and  even  for  years: 
ragged  and  half-starved  and  half-clothed;  educated  people 
with  no  books  to  read;  wealthy  people  with  no  means  of 
recovering  their  lost  wealth ;  skilled  workmen  with  no  work 
to  do  and  no  tools  to  work  with;  parents  with  no  way  of 
discovering  the  children  from  whom  they  had  been  sepa- 
rated ;  home-lovers  parted  from  their  homes  forever. 


WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Try  all  that  on  your  supposers,  if  you  will,  and  you  will 
have  a  weak  picture  of  the  evacuation  of  the  Crimea  after 
the  army  of  General  Wrangel  went  on  the  rocks  in  Novem- 
ber of  1920,  and  a  faint  idea  of  the  reasons  why  the  Russian 
refugees  in  Constantinople  are  the  most  out-of-luck  individ- 
uals that  have  ever  been  frowned  on  by  Fortune. 

The  Crimea  hangs  down  into  the  Black  Sea  like  a  lop- 
sided knapsack  dangling  from  one  strap.  It  is  a  beautiful 
country,  with  rolling  meadow-lands  sloping  down  to  the 
water's  edge  and  tumbling  mountain  ranges  in  the  back- 
ground. The  ground  is  rich  and  black  and  fertile;  and  in 
the  spring  and  summer  and  autumn  the  fields  are  ablaze 
with  flowers  and  alive  with  song-birds  and  wild  fowl  of 
every  description.  The  czar  had  a  summer  palace  in  the 
Crimea,  and  it  was  a  favorite  resort  for  wealthy  Russians 
from  the  north.  After  the  Bolsheviks  placed  violent  and 
bloody  hands  upon  the  helm  of  the  Russian  ship  of  state, 
many  refugees,  fleeing  south  from  Petrograd  and  Moscow, 
found  their  way  to  the  Crimea.  Then  came  the  Odessa 
evacuations,  which  sent  a  few  more  refugees  over  to  the 
Crimea's  apparent  isolation  and  safety;  and  a  little  later 
Denikine  was  smashed  at  Novorossisk,  and  the  Crimea  was 
again  the  goal  of  many  refugees  who  had  trusted  vainly  in 
the  protection  of  Denikine's  army.  The  entire  Black  Sea 
coast  of  Russia,  with  the  exception  of  the  down-hanging 
peninsula  of  the  Crimea,  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Bolsheviks. 

When,  therefore,  General  Wrangel,  backed  by  the 
French,  started  his  reorganization  of  the  anti-Bolshevik 
forces  after  the  Denikine  disaster  with  the  intention  of 
launching  a  new  campaign  against  the  Soviet  armies,  he  had 
practically  no  choice  except  to  start  from  the  Crimea. 

The  Crimea  is  joined  to  the  mainland  by  a  comparatively 


o 

•=. 


5 

CO 


173 

narrow  neck;  and  across  the  neck  there  is  only  one  line  of 
railroad,  and  for  that  matter  only  one  good  carriage  road  as 
well.  The  rest  of  the  neck  is  made  up  of  tide-marshes 
which  can  not  be  crossed  in  the  spring  or  summer  or  autumn. 
Consequently  a  small  force  of  men  can  hold  the  neck,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  against  the  attacks  of  a  much  larger 
force  operating  on  the  mainland.  Wrangel,  who  is  a  brave 
man  and  an  ardent  patriot,  but  very  much  inclined  to  allow 
actual  conditions  to  be  somewhat  fogged  and  distorted  by 
his  own  desires,  seemed  to  have  implicit  confidence  in  his 
powers  to  maintain  a  base  in  the  Crimea  and,  with  a  force  of 
between  fifty  and  sixty  thousand  men,  force  his  way  up  into 
Russia  in  spite  of  a  Bolshevik  army  of  about  two  million 
men,  and  ultimately  become  master  of  Russia.  His  con- 
fident hopes,  strangely,  were  shared  by  most  of  the  Russian 
refugees  in  Europe  and  by  many  European  military  experts 
who  should  have  known  better. 

When  the  Bolsheviks  ceased  their  military  operations 
against  the  Poles  late  in  the  summer  of  1920,  and  conse- 
quently released  their  best  divisions  for  service  against 
Wrangel  in  the  south,  the  American  relief  organizations  in 
Constantinople  began  to  visualize  Wrangel's  finish  with 
great  distinctness.  "In  January  or  February,"  they  said  to 
each  other,  "the  marshes  will  freeze  in  the  Crimea  and  the 
Bolsheviks  will  come  across  them  and  cut  in  on  Wrangel's 
flank.  Wrangel  will  get  it  in  the  neck  and  we  will  get  a 
flood  of  refugees  in  approximately  the  same  place."  And 
so  the  relief  organizations,  in  spite  of  the  optimism  with 
which  Wrangel's  venture  seemed  to  be  regarded  in  the  out- 
side world,  slowly  began  to  prepare  for  the  arrival  of  more 
refugees  in  January  or  February.  Their  arrival,  it  might  be 
added,  was  not  looked  forward  to  with  any  pleasurable 


174  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

anticipation;  for  Constantinople,  being  practically  the  only 
outlet  from  the  entire  Near  East,  was  already  overcrowded 
with  refugees  from  former  evacuations  of  Russia,  to  say 
nothing  of  refugees  from  Armenia,  from  the  interior  of 
Turkey,  from  Thrace  and  from  Georgia, 

And  then,  early  in  November,  the  Crimea  witnessed  a 
combination  of  events  that  left  the  oldest  inhabitants  wag- 
ging their  beards  helplessly  and  declaring  weakly — after 
the  manner  of  amateur  weather-prophets — that  it  couldn't 
be  true  because  nothing  like  it  had  ever  happened  before.  A 
series  of  extremely  low  tides  practically  drained  the  tide- 
marshes  of  the  neck  which  joined  the  Crimea  to  the  main- 
land, and  at  the  same  time  a  violent  cold-snap  froze  the 
marshes  solidly.  The  Bolsheviks  at  once  poured  men  and 
guns  across  the  frozen  marshes  and  caught  Wrangel's 
forces  in  the  flank.  They  were  forced  to  retreat  at  top 
speed;  and  so,  at  the  beginning  of  November  instead  of  in 
January  or  February,  the  ports  of  the  Crimea  were  filled 
with  their  normal  inhabitants,  plus  the  refugees  who  had 
fled  from  the  Bolsheviks  in  preceding  months  and  years,  and 
also  plus  the  men  of  Wrangel's  army;  and  all  of  them  in 
turn  were  filled  with  a  passionate  and  poignant  longing  to 
get  away  from  Russia  before  the  Bolsheviks  got  to  them. 
By  far  the  largest  number  of  people  were  in  Sebastopol,  but 
there  were  also  several  thousand  in  the  smaller  ports  of 
Eupatoria,  Yalta,  Theodosia  and  Kertsch.  There  were 
ships  of  the  old  Russian  navy  in  these  ports,  and  Russian 
merchant  ships  and  tramp  steamers,  and  Allied  cruisers  and 
destroyers,  to  say  nothing  of  a  strange  collection  of  marine 
relics  and  monstrosities  which  were  better  fitted  for  junk- 
piles  than  for  the  transporting  of  human  freight  across  the 
Black  Sea.  In  all  there  were  one  hundred  and  eleven 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       175 

ships,  not  counting-  rowboats  and  craft  under  one  hundred 
tons  burthen;  and  the  number  of  people  who  crowded 
aboard  them  was  not  less  than  one  hundred  and  thirty  thou- 
sand and  not  more  than  one  hundred  and  seventy  thousand. 
None  of  the  ships,  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  the  occasion, 
paused  to  print  passenger  lists;  and  the  exact  number  of 
people  who  came  out  in  the  Crimea  evacuation  will  never  be 
accurately  known.  General  Wrangel  informed  me  with 
great  positiveness  that  the  number  was  one  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand.  The  figures  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
show  that  one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  came  out. 

At  any  rate,  there  were  at  least  one  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  of  them,  men,  women  and  children ;  and  on  most  of 
the  ships  they  were  so  squeezed  and  jammed  together  that 
during  the  forty-eight  hours  and  more  of  the  journey  from 
the  Crimea  to  Constantinople — for  some  of  the  ships  were 
fairly  fast,  and  some  were  slow,  and  some  had  so  little  coal 
that  they  could  only  get  a  few  miles  from  land  and  then 
shriek  for  a  tow — the  refugees  slept  standing  in  their  places. 
It  was  as  though,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  entire  population 
of  a  fairly  large  American  city  had  been  suddenly  shoved 
aboard  ships  and  transported  a  great  distance.  The  ordinary 
functions  of  life  went  on  for  them  as  they  would  have  pro- 
ceeded ashore ;  and  men  and  women  and  children  died,  and 
children  were  born,  as  demanded  by  the  agencies  which 
provide  every  city  with  a  daily  death  rate  and  a  daily  birth 
rate. 

Practically  none  of  these  refugees  had  gone  aboard  the 
ships  with  any  belongings  whatever  in  addition  to  the 
clothes  in  which  they  stood,  though  some  still  had  a  few  of 
their  family  jewels-  remaining.  They  had  stood  for  endless 
hours  at  the  docks  in  the  Crimea  waiting  to  board  the  ships, 


176  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

so  that  they  had  no  food;  nor  had  the  ships  been  stocked 
with  enough  food  or  water  to  supply  their  passengers.  It  is 
at  this  point  that  readers  would  do  well  to  stop  for  a  mo- 
ment in  order  to  contemplate  the  circumstances  of  these 
refugees :  without  money,  without  any  personal  belongings 
except  the  clothes  in  which  they  stood,  without  food,  with- 
out knowledge  of  the  language  of  the  country  in  which  they 
found  themselves,  without  any  one  to  whom  to  turn  for 
assistance,  without  a  country,  and  without  resources  of 
any  sort.  They  may  have  been  said  to  be  the  champion 
Withouters ;  for  it  has  never  been  my  lot  to  see  or  to  hear  of 
any  large  mass  of  people  that  was  without  as  much  as  these 
people  were  without. 

It  is  a  difficult  matter  to  imagine  the  conditions  which 
existed  on  these  ships  when  they  arrived  at  Constantinople. 
There  was  one  Russian  battleship  that  brought  in,  according 
to  reliable  estimates,  ten  thousand  refugees.  The  relief 
workers  who  went  out  and  boarded  this  ship  stated  that  her 
decks  were  so  jammed  with  people  that  one  had  to  spend 
an  entire  day  in  worming  his  way  from  bow  to  stern.  There 
were  many  wounded  soldiers  on  the  ships,  and  the  usual 
number  of  sick  persons  that  one  might  expect  to  find  in  a 
city. 

Here,  for  example,  is  one  typical  case  out  of  thousands. 
Captain  Constantine  Pramberger  of  the  Kaksholm  regiment 
— an  Imperial  Guards  outfit — was  trapped  at  night  near  the 
Crimean  town  of  Melytopol  by  Bolshevik  cavalry.  His  out- 
fit was  badly  cut  up,  and  he  was  captured.  The  Bolsheviks 
stripped  him  and  fired  three  bullets  into  him,  for  they  were 
too  busy  to  carry  prisoners.  (In  1919,  by  the  way,  the  Bol- 
sheviks killed  his  father  and  his  two  brothers,  who  were 
twenty-one  and  twenty- four  years  old.)  One  of  the  bullets 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       177 

smashed  the  bones  in  his  right  hand :  the  other  two  merely 
made  flesh  wounds.  He  got  some  clothes  from  a  dead  man 
and  worked  down  to  Sebastopol  in  time  to  get  aboard  the 
ship  which  took  out  the  ten  thousand.  He  stood  for  three 
days  without  sleep  and  without  medical  attention  before  he 
reached  Constantinople.  He  was  a  very  fine  pianist,  and 
now  he  can  never  play  again,  for  the  smashed  bones  in  his 
right  hand  have  failed  to  heal  properly  through  lack  of 
attention.  I  spent  some  time  with  him  in  the  refugee  camp 
at  Mekri  Keoi,  just  outside  the  walls  of  Constantinople. 
He  is  teaching  English  to  a  class  of  sixty-three  refugees,  and 
he  speaks  five  languages  fluently;  but  his  only  worldly 
possession  is  the  suit  of  clothes  which  he  took  from  the  dead 
man  near  Melytopol.  His  case  is  so  commonplace  that  no 
refugee  would  consider  it  worthy  of  mention.  The  ships 
were  full  of  such  cases. 

One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  with  which  a  person  has 
to  contend  in  picking  up  information  on  the  Constantinople 
refugees  lies  in  the  inability  of  the  refugees  themselves  to 
see  anything  remarkable  in  the  most  hair-raising  expe- 
riences. All  of  them  have  been  through  so  much  that  it  is 
only  the  commonplace  that  seems  to  arouse  their  interest. 
Tell  a  refugee  that  another  refugee  has  just  arrived  from 
the  Caspian  after  running  a  fifty-mile  foot-race  with  a  lion 
and  biting  two  sharks  to  death,  and  he  will  merely  yawn  and 
ask  languidly  what  the  prospects  are  for  dinner. 

Jules  Verne  wrote  a  novel  called  Michael  Strogoff,  or 
The  Courier  of  the  Czar.  It  was  a  book  full  of  fierce  and 
thrilling  adventures  in  the  wilds  of  Russia  and  Siberia ;  and 
after  timid  maidens  of  the  early  eighties  had  followed 
Michael's  adventures  for  a  few  chapters  with  bulging  eyes, 
they  usually  felt  obliged  to  shut  themselves  up  in  a  dark 


i;8  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

closet  for  several  hours  in  order  to  still  the  mad  fluttering 
of  their  hearts.  There  was  a  time  when  I  used  to  consider 
Michael's  adventures  to  be  genuine  literary  beef,  iron  and 
wine;  and  after  some  experience  with  Russian  refugees,  I 
got  the  book  and  read  it  again.  I  then  discovered  that  Mr. 
Strogoff's  trials  and  tribulations,  as  compared  with  the 
troubles  of  the  average  refugee,  were  about  as  thrilling  as 
those  of  the  hero  of  an  Arnold  Bennett  novel,  whose  life- 
climax  arrives  when  his  wife  leaves  the  room  and  forgets  to 
shut  the  door  behind  her. 

Close  questioning  is  frequently  needed  in  order  to  force 
hardened  refugees  to  reveal  the  details  of  an  occurrence 
which  seems  to  them  quite  dull  and  featureless.  At  a 
refugee  center  in  Constantinople  one  morning  somebody 
remarked  that  Gantzimouroff  had  entirely  recovered  and 
hoped  to  start  back  soon.  The  remark  seemed  to  have 
possibilities,  so  I  asked  who  Gantzimouroff  was.  Some- 
body replied  that  he  was  a  prince. 

"Anything  unusual  about  his  story?"  I  asked. 

No,  they  didn't  think  so.  He  had  merely  been  a  little 
hurt,  and  was  thinking  of  going  back. 

Well,  how  had  he  been  hurt  ?    In  a  fight,  or  how  ? 

No,  not  in  a  fight ;  on  his  way  down  from  the  Crimea  the 
boom  had  cracked  his  head  open. 

What  boom  was  that? 

Why,  the  boom  on  the  little  boat  that  he  had  come  from 
the  Crimea  in. 

Oh,  he  came  in  a  little  boat,  did  he  ? 

Yes,  he  drifted  around  for  three  weeks  and  then  the 
Rumanians  put  him  in  jail. 

Ah !    In  jail !    Well ;  this  man  seems  to  have  had  a  fright 
fully  dull  trip  of  it :  absolutely  uneventful,  so  to  speak ;  but 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        179 

since  there's  nothing  else  to  do,  suppose  you  tell  me  his  fea- 
tureless case  in  detail. 

And  this  was  the  way  of  it : 

Prince  Gantzimouroff  is  a  prince  of  the  greatest  family 
in  Mongolia.  The  Gantzimouroff  estates  in  Mongolia  are 
nearly  as  large  as  some  European  nations.  He  is  a  direct 
descendant  of  Tamerlane;  and  the  one  possession  that  has 
survived  his  wanderings  is  the  ancient  seal  ring  of  Tamer- 
lane himself.  He  is  the  genuine  article  as  a  prince  and  as 
a  fighter  as  well.  He  was  badly  wounded  at  the  siege  of 
Port  Arthur,  where  he  received  that  coveted  reward  for 
valor,  the  Officer's  Cross  of  St.  George;  and  as  a  result  of 
his  wounds  he  was  paralyzed  for  many  months.  In  the 
Great  War  he  fought  on  the  German  front ;  and  after  Russia 
went  Bolshevik  he  fought  first  in  Denikine's  Volunteer 
Army  and  then  in  Wrangel's  Volunteer  Army.  When  he 
got  down  to  Sebastopol  and  had  seen  to  getting  his  troops 
aboard  ships,  he  found  that  the  ships  were  so  crowded  that 
there  seemed  to  be  no  corner  into  which  he  could  squeeze. 
So  he  and  six  other  officers  hunted  around  until  they  found 
a  thirty-five  foot  caricature  of  a  yacht.  Her  sails  had 
rotted  to  pieces;  and  from  the  magnificent  size  of  the  bar- 
nacles on  her,  she  was  built  around  the  time  that  Columbus 
demonstrated  the  egg  trick  before  the  Queen  of  Spain.  They 
got  some  provisions  aboard  her  and  attached  her  to  the 
stern  of  a  refugee  steamer  with  the  safest-looking  hawser 
that  they  could  find.  And  when  they  were  a  few  hours  out 
to  sea,  the  hawser  parted.  They  had  neither  oars  nor  sails ; 
so  the  six  of  them  removed  all  but  the  absolutely  essential 
portions  of  their  garments,  ripped  them  to  pieces  and  sewed 
them  together  again  in  the  form  of  a  sail.  Almost  imme- 
diately they  ran  into  a  squall,  and  the  prince  got  his  head  in 


i8o  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

front  of  the  boom  at  an  inauspicious  moment,  with  the  result 
that  it  cracked  his  head  open  and  knocked  him  out.  It  also 
knocked  out  several  of  his  teeth.  Twice  they  narrowly 
escaped  being  driven  ashore  in  Soviet  Russia.  Finally,  after 
three  weeks  of  aimless  cruising,  they  struck  land.  Not 
knowing  where  they  were,  they  hunted  for  some  one  to  tell 
them;  and  the  person  whom  they  found,  after  informing 
them  that  they  were  in  Rumania,  notified  the  military 
authorities  and  had  them  arrested.  Rumania  was  at  war 
with  Soviet  Russia;  and  the  prince  and  his  comrades,  after 
their  unpleasant  experiences,  looked  like  the  most  virulent 
of  nihilists.  Consequently  they  were  kept  in  jail  for  a 
month,  at  the  end  of  which  time  they  established  their 
identity  and  were  released.  They  at  once  went  back  to  their 
yacht,  which  nobody  had  considered  worth  stealing — and  a 
thing  has  got  to  be  pretty  worthless  not  to  be  considered 
worth  stealing  in  Rumania.  In  their  old  home  they  continued 
down  the  Black  Sea,  and  after  a  quiet  journey  they  reached 
Constantinople.  The  prince,  being  penniless,  hunted  a  job, 
but  wasn't  successful.  He  finally  announced  that  if  he  had 
to  choose  between  taking  a  chance  on  starving  to  death  in 
Constantinople  and  running  the  risk  of  being  killed  by  the 
Bolsheviks,  he  preferred  the  latter  since  it  also  gave  him  a 
chance  to  fight.  So  he  was  preparing  to  go  back  to  a  Black 
Sea  port  in  Soviet  Russia  and  attempt  to  dodge  Bolsheviks 
with  enough  success  to  work  up  across  Russia  to  Siberia, 
and  then  down  to  Urga  in  Mongolia  where  the  Gantzi- 
mouroff  estates  begin. 

At  any  rate,  when  the  first  of  the  refugee  ships  slipped 
down  the  Bosphorus  on  the  fifteenth  of  November  and 
dropped  their  mud-hooks  under  the  ancient  walls  and  the 
towering  minarets  of  Constantinople,  they  were  loaded  with 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       181 

a  miserable  mass  of  humanity.  Nobody  was  ready  for  them : 
nothing  was  prepared  for  them.  When  the  first  ships 
appeared,  the  general  estimate  of  the  total  number  of 
refugees  that  would  arrive  from  the  Crimea  was  forty  thou- 
sand— or  less  than  one-third  of  the  number  that  actually 
did  arrive.  This  shows  the  lack  of  information  that 
existed  concerning  the  evacuation. 

The  first  persons  to  get  out  to  the  ships  were  the  Levan- 
tine boatmen  and  traders — the  people  of  the  mongrel  Medi- 
terranean nationalities  who  live  by  sharp  practises  and  shady 
dealing.  Practically  all  of  them,  the  Russians  said,  were 
Greeks.  The  refugees  were  very  hungry  and  half  crazy 
with  thirst ;  and  these  Levantine  rats,  to  the  everlasting  dis- 
grace of  the  nationalities  to  which  they  belonged,  threw 
ropes  up  to  them  and  sold  them  bottles  of  water  and  loaves 
of  bread  for  wedding  rings  and  fur  coats.  When  pay  was 
slow  in  coming,  they  disported  themselves  with  the  refugees, 
pretending  to  tie  loaves  to  the  dangling  ropes,  and  laughing 
merrily  when  the  refugees  clawed  at  them.  A  number  of 
refugees  told  me  about  this  fascinating  exhibition  of  court- 
liness and  hospitality  on  the  part  of  the  Levantines,  and  some 
of  them  were  so  stirred  by  the  recollection  that  they  wept 
with  rage  at  the  mere  telling  of  it.  None  of  the  people  who 
indulged  in  these  gentle  pleasantries  were  Turks.  And  I 
might  add  at  this  point  that  a  vast  deal  of  misinformation 
has  been  absorbed  in  the  last  few  decades  by  Europeans  and 
Americans  as  to  the  relative  barbarousness  of  Turks,  Greeks. 
Armenians  and  other  residents  of  the  Near  East.  The 
Turk  may  be  terrible,  as  advertised  by  various  long-dead 
poets;  but  when  his  next-door  neighbor  is  blessed  with 
equal  opportunities  for  terribleness,  he  makes  the  Turk 
look  like  an  awkward  amateur  or — as  they  say  in  Boston — 


182  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

a  tin-horn  sport.  And  it  might  also  be  well  to  add  that  the 
differences  between  the  Turk  and  the  Greek  and  the  Turk 
and  the  Armenian  are  seldom  religious  differences;  they 
are  almost  invariably  political.  This  statement,  although  it 
does  not  agree  with  the  persistent  propaganda  disseminated 
by  those  industrious  political  agencies,  the  Greek  and  Ar- 
menian churches,  is  nevertheless  true. 

The  relief  organizations,  however,  got  under  way  with 
great  rapidity.  The  American  Red  Cross,  from  the  very 
first,  did  exceptionally  fine  work  among  the  refugees,  and 
in  such  a  way  that  the  Russians  in  the  camps  and  the  Rus- 
sians in  Constantinople  and  the  Russians  in  all  the  other 
cities  of  Europe  express  their  gratitude  to  the  American 
Red  Cross  and  the  American  people  with  unusual  feeling 
and  sincerity.*  The  French  High  Commission  notified  all 
the  Constantinople  relief  organizations  that  the  French 
would  assume  the  responsibility  for  the  relief  of  the  refugees 
and  requested  that  the  work  of  all  the  organizations  be  car- 
ried on  through  the  French.  The  British  had  taken  charge 
of  Denikine's  refugees  from  Novorossisk;  and  since  the 
French  had  backed  and  recognized  Wrangel,  it  was  felt  that 


*The  London  Times,  on  November  3,  1921,  printed  the  following 
statement : 

"We  have  received  a  copy  of  an  appeal  signed  by  Lady  Rumbold 
(wife  of  the  British  High  Commissioner  in  Constantinople),  Mrs. 
Bristol  (wife  of  the  American  High  Commissioner),  Vice-Admiral 
Tyrwhitt,  and  others  on  behalf  of  the  Russian  refugees  at  Constanti- 
nople, whose  condition  is  now  critical. 

"  'Until  October  20,000  persons,  mostly  invalids,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, were  kept  alive  by  the  French  and  by  the  American  Red  Cross. 
That  help  has  been  withdrawn,  and  a  number  of  refugees  are  dying  of 
starvation.  In  Constantinople  itself  it  is  impossible  to  provide  work 
for  the  refugees,  and  visas  to  other  countries  are  refused. 

"  'Help  from  private  generosity  is  earnestly  requested.  Both  food 
and  clothing  are  necessary.  The  Allied  authorities  are  deeply  con- 
cerned by  the  problem,  which  adds  seriously  to  their  many  difficulties. 
The  appeal  states : — "We  earnestly  beg  that  every  one  who  can  spare 
even  the  smallest  sum  will  immediately  send  a  donation  by  cheque  or 
otherwise  to  the  Constantinople  Relief  Fund  for  Russian  Refugees, 
care  of  Imperial  Ottoman  Bank.  Constantinople."'" 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       183 

they  should  look  after  his  evacuation.  The  size  of  these 
Russian  evacuations  have  made  it  imperative  that  they  be 
closely  supervised  and  controlled ;  for  they  have  been  very 
similar  to  the  great  migrations  of  early  days  which  so  fre- 
quently altered  the  map  of  Europe  and  changed  the  destinies 
of  nations.  If  allowed  to  follow  their  natural  course,  they 
would  unquestionably  have  resulted  in  guerrilla  warfare 
of  a  particularly  virulent  sort,  and  in  the  complete  upset  of 
the  Near-Eastern  schemes  which  have  been  so  carefully 
thought  out  and  so  delicately  nursed  by  sundry  European 
nations.  So  the  French  took  over  the  Wrangel  evacuation, 
and  they  found  themselves  with  a  tremendous  and  expen- 
sive job  on  their  hands.  Considering  the  difficulties  which 
confronted  them,  they  did  a  very  good  job  indeed ;  but  they 
unfortunately  did  it  in  such  a  manner  that  they  antagonized 
the  Russians  almost  beyond  endurance.  They  constantly 
reminded  the  Russians  of  the  help  which  was  being  given  to 
them,  and  they  constantly  threatened  to  withdraw  that  help 
entirely.  I  was  in  Constantinople  late  in  March,  1921,  and 
the  French  at  that  time  had  issued  official  statements  declar- 
ing that  on  the  first  of  April  they  would  cease  feeding  the 
Russians.  Since  there  was  no  one  else  in  a  position  to  do 
it,  the  only  inference  to  be  drawn  from  these  statements  was 
that  the  Russians  were  to  be  allowed  to  starve  to  death.  This 
naturally  excites  the  Russians.  I  will  explain  this  matter 
more  fully  in  another  place. 

The  refugee  ships  poured  into  the  Bosphorus  in  such 
numbers  that  the  French  organization,  at  the  beginning,  was 
unable  to  handle  the  situation.  Until  it  could  do  so,  the 
American  Red  Cross  did  some  very  efficient  work.  In  one 
instance  it  placed  two  thousand  rations  aboard  a  ship  in 
twenty  minutes  after  being  notified  of  the  ship's  arrival. 
Within  a  very  short  time  it  distributed  one  hundred  thou- 


184  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

sand  rations  to  the  different  ships;  and  it  was  constantly 
busy  supplying  all  of  them  with  water.  The  American 
people  have  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  American  Red 
Cross  for  the  relief  work  which  it  did  on  and  after  the 
arrival  of  the  Russian  refugees  in  Constantinople. 

A  great  many  of  the  civilian  refugees  were  brought  from 
the  Crimea  on  American,  British  and  French  war-ships. 
These  refugees  were  landed  in  Constantinople  immediately 
on  arrival  and  were  taken  care  of  by  various  Russian  organ- 
izations, assisted  by  the  American  Red  Cross  and  some  other 
American  relief  organizations. 

The  bulk  of  refugees,  however,  came  down  aboard  Rus- 
sian ships ;  and  these  ships  were  kept  lying  in  the  Bosphorus 
until  the  French  decided  what  to  do  with  them.  Eventually 
they  were  distributed  in  the  following  way : 

Wrangel's  first  army  corps,  consisting  of  twenty-six 
thousand  men,  was  sent  down  to  Gallipoli,  a  twelve-hour 
boat  ride  from  Constantinople,  and  installed  in  a  regular 
military  camp.  The  men  lived  in  large  tents,  ninety  men  to 
a  tent.  They  received  a  daily  ration  from  the  French  which 
was  theoretically  equal  to  the  ration  received  by  French 
soldiers  in  the  field.  The  ration  which  they  actually  received 
was  only  two-thirds  of  that.  The  men  were  regularly 
drilled,  and  excellent  discipline  was  maintained.  Generally 
speaking,  the  men  at  Gallipoli  were  as  well  off  as  they  would 
have  been  if  they  were  still  in  the  field.  Near  the  military 
camp  there  was  a  civil  refugee  camp  where  there  were  two 
thousand  more  refugees.  The  American  Red  Cross  gave 
these  refugees  a  supplementary  daily  ration  in  addition  to 
the  French  ration,  and  supplied  them  with  necessary  clothes. 
There  were  three  hospitals  for  the  Gallipoli  camp  and  all 
of  them  were  adequately  supplied  with  medicines  and  instru- 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        185 

ments  by  the  American  Red  Cross.  They  were  over- 
crowded, however;  and  out  of  over  six  hundred  fifty  cases 
in  them  in  March,  1921,  three  hundred  were  typhus  cases. 
Almost  straight  out  from  the  Dardanelles  in  the  ^Egean 
Sea,  about  twenty  hours  from  Constantinople,  is  the  large 
Island  of  Lemnos.  Like  so  many  of  the  isles  of  Greece,  which 
sundry  poets  have  misrepresented  to  the  world  at  large  as 
being  miniature  Paradises,  Lemnos  is  a  barren,  wind-swept, 
sterile  and  wholly  undesirable  parcel  of  real  estate.  If  one 
hunted  assiduously,  one  might  possibly  find  a  worse  place 
for  a  refugee  camp  or  for  any  other  sort  of  camp,  but  I 
doubt  it.  It  was  made,  however,  the  site  of  the  camp  of 
seven  thousand  Cossacks  of  the  Don  corps  of  Wrangel's 
army,  of  ten  thousand  Cossacks  of  the  Kuban  corps,  and  of 
two  thousand  civilians,  men,  women  and  children,  from  both 
the  Don  and  the  Kuban  regions.  The  entire  crowd  was 
lodged  in  small  circular  tents  which  are  supposed  to  hold 
ten  persons  apiece,  but  into  each  of  which  sixteen  persons 
were  actually  crowded.  They  were  miserably  underfed, 
because  they  got  only  two-thirds  of  a  French  soldier's  ration, 
whereas  the  exposed  situation  of  the  camp  is  such  that  they 
should  have  had  more  food  in  order  to  resist  the  weather 
conditions.  All  of  the  camp's  water  was  distilled  from  sea 
water.  There  isn't  a  scrap  of  fuel  on  the  island ;  and  barely 
enough  was  brought  to  them  on  barges  to  enable  them  to 
cook  one  meal  a  day.  The  camp  had  two  field  hospitals, 
both  of  which  were  unheated ;  and  both  of  them  were  amply 
provided  with  medicines  and  instruments  furnished  by  the 
American  Red  Cross.  In  March,  1921,  there  were  fourteen 
hundred  patients  in  these  two  hospitals.  The  two  thousand 
civilian  refugees  received  from  the  American  Red  Cross  a 
daily  ration  in  addition  to  the  insufficient  one  furnished  by 


i86 

the  French.  The  discipline  among  the  Lemnos  troops  was 
not  good,  though  they  were  still  saluting  their  officers. 
There  had  been  a  considerable  amount  of  Bolshevik  agita- 
tion among  them.  By  March,  forty-two  Bolsheviks  had 
been  deported,  and  six  hundred  soldiers  had  been  isolated 
from  the  others  as  a  result  of  Bolshevik  tendencies.  Feeling 
against  the  French  was  running  very  high;  for  every 
refugee  on  Lemnos  had  heard  of  the  repeated  official  French 
threats  to  stop  feeding  all  refugees,  and  all  of  them  were  half 
frantic  with  fear  that  they  would  be  abandoned  on  Lemnos 
to  starve,  just  as  the  pariah  dogs  of  Constantinople  were 
abandoned  and  starved  to  death  on  Dog  Island  in  the  Sea 
of  Marmora  a  few  years  ago. 

Some  twenty-five  miles  north  of  Constantinople  is  the 
town  of  Tchataldja,  which  was  the  limit  of  the  advance  of 
the  Balkan  allies  against  the  Turks  in  the  second  Balkan 
War.  To  camps  in  and  near  Tchataldja  the  French  sent  the 
bulk  of  the  remainder  of  Wrangel's  troops — a  matter  of  ten 
thousand  men,  practically  all  Don  Cossacks  with  a  scattering 
of  civilian  refugees.  From  the  beginning  the  conditions  in 
the  Tchataldja  camps  were,  to  put  it  bluntly,  a  mess.  In 
some  sections  of  the  camp  the  men  lived  in  dark  and  leaking 
cowsheds  with  mud  floors — and  Constantinople  in  the  late 
winter  and  early  spring  gets  enough  rain  to  supply  the 
world  with  mud.  In  other  sections  there  weren't  enough 
tents  to  go  around,  so  that  soldiers  and  civilians  too  were 
obliged  to  dig  themselves  shelters  in  the  ground  and  hive 
into  them  like  animals.  Food  in  March,  1921,  was  not  being 
brought  up  regularly ;  and  when  it  was  brought  up,  it  wasn't 
brought  up  in  sufficient  quantities.  Every  one  was  con- 
stantly hungry  and  cold  because  of  lack  of  food  and  lack 
of  clothing.  Very  bad  discipline  and  morale  existed  among 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       187 

the  troops.  Several  hundred  had  elected  to  go  back  to 
Soviet  Russia,  not  because  they  had  gone  Bolshevik,  but 
because  the  Bolsheviks  seemed  to  them  more  preferable  than 
the  camps.  About  sixteen  hundred  refugees  left  the  Sandjak 
section  of  the  Tchataldja  camps  for  Soviet  Russia  under  the 
influence  of  Bolshevik  propaganda.  Fights  broke  out  at 
these  camps  between  the  refugees  and  the  French  troops. 
One  of  the  reasons  seems  to  have  been  that  the  French  set 
negro  troops  to  guard  the  refugee  enclosures ;  and  the  intelli- 
gence of  these  troops  is  such  that  they  regard  any  one  behind 
barbed  wire  as  some  sort  of  criminal.  Then,  too,  the 
refugees  were  constantly  trying  to  break  camp  and  tramp 
north  to  Bulgaria.  For  these  and  other  reasons  the  French, 
in  March,  were  preparing  to  transfer  the  Tchataldja 
refugees  to  the  Island  of  Lemnos;  and  the  refugees  were 
protesting  bitterly  against  the  transfer,  since  they  felt  sure 
they  would  be  marooned  on  Lemnos  and  left  there  to  die. 

The  Jugo-Slav  government  was  approached  by  the 
French  and  urged  to  take  some  of  the  refugees.  Serbia  and 
the  rest  of  Jugo-Slavia  already  had  a  great  many  refugees 
from  past  evacuations;  but  since  great  numbers  of  her  edu- 
cated people  had  been  killed  in  the  Balkan  Wars  and  the 
Great  War,  Serbia  replied  that  she  would  be  glad  to  take 
a  few  more  thousand  if  they  were  of  the  intelligentsia  class. 
The  Jugo-Slavs  and  the  Russians  get  along  pretty  well 
together ;  for  they  are  both  Slav  peoples.  The  two  languages 
are  not  exactly  the  same ;  but  a  Jugo-Slav  can  make  shift  to 
understand  a  Russian,  and  vice  versa,  just  as  a  Texas 
rancher  is  able  to  get  the  general  drift  of  a  Scotch  high- 
lander  if  he  talks  slowly  and  confines  himself  to  simple 
gestures.  So  eighteen  thousand  of  the  refugees  were 
shipped  down  past  Greece  and  up  the  Adriatic  to  Cattaro  on 


i88  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  Dalmatian  coast,  where  disease  broke  out  on  the  ships 
and  a  very  unpleasant  time  was  had  by  all.  The  American 
Red  Cross  again  did  some  effective  and  efficient  work  at 
Cattaro,  and  by  the  end  of  March  all  of  the  eighteen  thou- 
sand had  been  distributed  through  Jugo-Slavia. 

Some  of  the  most  celebrated  professors  in  the  univer- 
sities of  Russia  have  fled  from  Soviet  jurisdiction,  and  the 
Jugo-Slav  universities  were  enriched  by  such  educational 
giants  as  Spektorsky,  head  of  Kieff  University,  who  is  now 
at  Belgrad;  Maklezoff,  professor  of  the  Criminal  Code  in 
Kharkov  University,  now  at  Belgrad;  Laskareff,  professor 
of  geology  at  Odessa  University,  now  at  Zagreb ;  Sirrotinin, 
professor  of  pathology  at  Moscow  University,  now  at  Bel- 
grad; and  Wagner,  professor  of  zoology  at  Kieff,  now  at 
Belgrad.  Grimm,  the  former  head  of  Petrograd  University ; 
Medvedieff,  professor  of  biology  in  Odessa  University; 
Zavialoff,  professor  of  zoology  in  Odessa,  and  many  other 
well-known  educators  are  now  in  the  University  of  Sofia; 
for  Bulgaria  also  took  about  three  thousand  of  the  Wrangel 
refugees.  American  parlor  Bolsheviks  will  please  take  note 
that  even  such  desirable  and  valuable  citizens  as  university 
professors  find  life  intolerable  under  Bolshevik  rule;  and 
they  may  also  rest  assured  that  in  spite  of  their  sympathy 
for  the  Bolshevik  cause,  they — under  Bolshevism — would  be 
among  the  first  refugees  to  dodge  it. 

Finally,  about  six  thousand  refugees  were  sent  to  the 
town  of  Bizerta,  which  is  on  the  north  coast  of  Africa  just 
south  of  the  island  of  Sardinia. 

The  remainder  of  the  refugees,  numbering  between  forty 
and  sixty  thousand,  spilled  into  the  city  of  Constantinople 
or  into  camps  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city.  There  is  no  way 
of  discovering  the  exact  number  of  Russian  refugees  in 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        189 

Constantinople,  for  no  system  of  refugee  registration  has 
begun  to  give  the  number  with  any  degree  of  reliability. 
While  the  refugee  ships  lay  at  anchor  in  the  Bosphorus, 
thousands  of  them,  unwilling  to  endure  the  hardships  and 
uncertainty  of  further  travel,  bribed  boatmen  with  their 
last  piece  of  jewelry  or  with  a  fur  coat  or  with  some  last 
treasured  possession  to  set  them  ashore.  They  slid  down 
ropes  from  the  large  ships  into  smaller  vessels:  they  even 
swam  ashore  at  night  in  some  cases.  After  the  camps  had 
been  established,  furthermore,  large  numbers  of  them— 
soldiers,  for  the  most  part — broke  camp  and  sneaked  into  the 
city.  As  can  readily  be  understood,  the  soldiers  who  defied 
the  discipline  of  the  ships  and  the  camps  were  the  least 
desirable  type.  The  civilian  refugees,  however,  are  of  all 
sorts,  from  princes  of  very  ancient  and  honorable  families 
to  the  sorry  rascals  who  pretend  to  positions  and  titles  which 
they  never  had  in  the  hope  that  by  such  pretense  they  may  be 
able  to  exist  without  working. 

Constantinople  reminds  me,  in  general  shape,  of  a  giant 
mitten.  Past  the  ends  of  the  thumb-portion  and  the  finger- 
portion  of  the  mitten  flows  the  narrow  Bosphorus,  running 
swiftly  out  of  the  Black  Sea  in  a  channel  no  wider  than 
many  large  American  rivers — the  channel  through  which 
passes  all  the  wealth  of  the  Orient  in  its  journey  to  the  West- 
ern World.  The  finger-portion  of  the  mitten  is  the  old 
Imperial  city  of  Constantine  and  the  Byzantine  Empire,  and 
the  Stamboul  of  the  Turks.  Marching  along  its  ridge  are 
the  mighty  mosques  of  Saint  Sophia  and  the  sultans,  bulking 
proudly  above  the  solid  masses  of  shops  and  bazaars  and 
palaces  and  crowded  wooden  dwellings  which  comprise  the 
ancient  city.  It  is  these  mosques,  pale  pink  and  gold  in  the 
early  morning  haze,  gray  in  the  hot  light  of  noon  and  soft 


190  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

lavender  as  the  sun  goes  down,  which  makes  the  sky-line 
of  Stamboul  a  spectacle  more  striking  than  that  of  any  other 
city  in  the  world  with  the  single  exception  of  lower  New 
York. 

Across  from  the  finger-portion  of  the  mitten  lies  the 
thumb-portion,  which  is  Galata  along  the  water's  edge  and 
Pera  in  the  higher  portions.  In  Galata  and  Pera  live  the 
Greeks  and  the  Armenians,  the  Americans  and  British  and 
French,  and  all  the  other  nationalities  regarded  by  the  Turks 
as  foreigners.  Pera  swells  up  abruptly  and  proudly  from  the 
frowzy  money-changing  shops  and  cheap  stores  and  red- 
light  districts  and  water-front  activities  of  Galata;  and  her 
slopes  and  hilltops  are  closely  covered  with  modern  stone 
office  buildings  and  shops  and  apartment-houses  and  dwell- 
ings. 

Between  the  thumb-portion  and  the  finger-portion  of 
the  mitten,  running  at  right  angles  out  of  the  Bosphorus,  is 
the  Golden  Horn,  crowded  with  shipping  and  crossed  by 
the  Galata  Bridge,  across  which  surges  the  motliest  throng 
of  people  that  ever  mottled,  as  one  might  say,  a  single  city. 
Whatever  nationality  you  may  seek  can  be  found  on  the 
Galata  Bridge  on  any  day  in  any  year:  men  from  the  Far 
North  and  the  Far  South,  from  the  Far  East  and  the  Far 
West,  and  from  all  the  countries  between:  Poles,  Czechs, 
.  Rumanians,  Albanians,  Montenegrins,  Algerians,  Persians, 
Arabs,  Tartars,  Mongols,  Cossacks  of  all  the  fifty-seven 
varieties :  Finns  and  Chinamen ;  Americans  and  Hottentots ; 
kilted  Scotchmen  and  wilted  Peruvians — representatives  of 
any  country  that  may  suit  your  fancy. 

Everywhere  throughout  this  huge  city,  so  magnificent 
from  a  distance  and  so  squalid  when  you  are  in  it — this  city 
that  would  be  the  greatest  city  in  the  world  if  it  were  under 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       191 

the  American  or  the  British  flag — there  are  Russians.  In 
Stamboul  and  Galata  and  Pera,  on  Galata  Bridge  and  on  the 
ships  in  the  harbor,  one's  eye  constantly  meets  with  Russian 
uniforms  and  one's  ear  constantly  catches  the  harsh  sibilants 
of  the  Russian  language.  Scattered  through  Stamboul  and 
Pera  there  are  feeding  stations  where  they  come  daily  by 
thousands  and  get  the  food  which  they  can  neither  buy  nor 
earn.  The  precipitous  street  which  leads  from  the  Galata 
Bridge  up  to  the  Grand  Rue  de  Pera  is  filled  with  Russian- 
bloused  gentry  who  offer  you  Russian  money  at  prices  that 
make  an  American  wonder  whether  this  talk  of  a  paper 
shortage  isn't  all  piffle:  one  is  offered,  for  example,  ten 
thousand  Denikine  roubles  for  six  Turkish  piastres,  or  the 
equivalent  of  four  cents.  One  million  Denikine  or  Wrangel 
roubles — take  your  pick:  they're  equally  rotten — were 
quoted  to  me  at  ten  Turkish  pounds,  or  about  seven  dollars, 
the  last  time  I  walked  up  that  steep  and  narrow  way;  and 
from  what  I  knew  of  Constantinople  salesmen,  I  think  I 
could  have  beaten  them  down  to  about  three  dollars  and 
thirty  cents  if  I'd  had  time  to  waste  on  bargaining  or  had 
needed  the  roubles  to  make  paper-vests  or  something.  There 
are  Russian  restaurants,  Russian  newspapers,  Russian  tea- 
shops,  Russian  gambling-houses,  Russian  dance-halls  and 
Russian  shops  of  every  description.  Some  shops  drive  a 
thriving  trade  in  good  Russian  vodka  and  fair  Russian 
vodka  and  Russian  vodka  of  the  sort  that  would  dissolve  a 
life-size  marble  statue  of  the  Dying  Gladiator  in  twelve  min- 
utes, or  peel  the  hide  from  a  very  old  and  very  tough  ele- 
phant. The  main  streets  of  Pera  are  sprinkled  with  shop- 
and  window-signs  in  the  odd  and  deformed-looking  Rus- 
sian letters.  There  are  Russians  selling  flowers  and  toys  on 
street  corners;  there  are  admirals  opening  the  doors  of 


192  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

buildings  to  callers;  there  are  army  officers  taking  the  hats 
and  coats  of  patrons  in  restaurants ;  there  are  princesses  and 
the  wives  of  former  millionaires  waiting  on  table — well,  let 
us  have  a  few  specific  instances : 

Admiral  Ponamareff  has  a  wife  and  two  daughters.  He 
was  fortunate  enough  to  get  a  job  as  night  watchman  with 
the  American  Black  Sea  Steamship  Company,  which  put 
him  to  work  watching  the  company's  ships  when  they  tied 
up  to  the  docks  in  the  Golden  Horn.  He  was  with  Admiral 
Rojestvensky  at  the  disastrous  Russian  defeat  in  the  battle 
of  Tsushima  Straits  during  the  Russian-Japanese  War. 
During  that  battle  he  saved  three  hundred  and  fifty  men 
from  the  sinking  cruiser  Oural,  and  got  his  own  ship  away 
in  safety.  He  escaped  the  Japanese  by  entirely  altering  the 
appearance  of  his  ship,  and  eventually  reached  Madagascar* 
For  his  action  in  the  battle  he  received  the  highest  honors 
which  the  Russian  government  could  bestow.  At  the  time 
of  the  Messina  earthquake  he  was  in  command  of  the  Rus- 
sian cruiser  Admiral  Makaroff,  and  reached  the  scene  of 
the  disaster  ahead  of  all  other  war-ships.  He  saved  ten 
hundred  and  fifty  men,  women  and  children  and  rushed 
them  to  Naples,  where  he  came  down  with  typhoid  fever. 
After  that  he  became  commandant  of  Cronstadt  fortress; 
and  when  the  war  broke  out  he  was  chief  of  the  naval  guard 
at  Peterhoff  and  Tsarskoe  Selo— a  pretty  good  record  for  a 
night  watchman,  all  things  considered.  The  American  who 
is  at  the  head  of  the  American  Black  Sea  Steamship  Com- 
pany in  Constantinople  went  down  to  the  docks  one  day  and 
got  an  earful  of  the  admiral's  experiences.  Having  heard 
it,  he  summoned  a  stenographer  and  dictated  a  long  cable 
to  the  Italian  government.  As  a  result  of  this  message, 
the  Italian  government  has  given  to  Admiral  Ponamareff 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        193 

and  to  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever  a  house  and  a  piece  of 
land  at  Messina,  and  they  have  further  provided  him  and 
his  family  with  free  transportation  to  Messina;  so  the 
admiral  has  nothing  more  to  worry  about  except  the  chances 
of  another  Messina  earthquake. 

At  the  crowded  corner  where  the  Rue  des  Petit  Champs 
runs  out  of  the  Grand  Rue  de  Pera  and  around  to  the 
American  embassy  and  the  Pera  Palace  Hotel  stands  a 
flower-seller  named  Mandrika,  He  is  in  the  uniform  of  a 
Russian  officer  because  he  has  nothing  else  to  wear;  and 
on  his  tunic  are  the  ribbons  of  various  orders  and  cam- 
paigns. He  comes  from  Petrograd,  where  he  was  very  well 
known  indeed ;  for  he  was  not  only  an  officer  in  that  excel- 
lent regiment,  His  Majesty's  Own  Guard  Rifles,  but  he  was 
aide  de  camp  and  general  a  Id,  suite  to  the  czar  himself.  The 
flower  business,  he  says,  is  wretched ;  but  a  wretched  flower 
business  is  better  than  begging. 

The  Russian  embassy,  which  is  a  large  building  on  the 
Grand  Rue  de  Pera,  has  been  partly  turned  into  a  three- 
hundred-bed  hospital,  equipped  throughout  by  the  American 
Red  Cross.  The  food  for  the  patients  of  the  hospital  is 
prepared  in  a  kitchen  in  the  embassy  basement;  and  the 
chief  cook  of  this  kitchen  and  his  staff  of  ten  men  are  all 
Guards  officers.  Another  section  of  the  Russian  embassy 
has  for  its  janitor  General  Kontemikoff,  commander  of  a 
division  in  the  Great  War,  and  late  marechal  de  noblesse  of 
the  District  of  the  Don.  This  latter  job  can't  be  translated 
into  English  with  any  exactness;  but,  if  my  understanding 
is  correct,  it  is  a  sort  of  cross  between  the  president  of  a 
State  Senate  and  a  presidentially-appointed  cotillion  leader. 

The  editor  and  publisher  of  the  largest  afternoon  paper 
in  Sebastopol  is  jealously  guarding  his  newly-acquired  job 


194  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

as  hall-porter  in  a  Pera  office  building.  In  the  stables  of 
British  Headquarters  there  are  five  Russian  officers  who 
have  been  employed  as  grooms.  The  chauffeur  of  the 
United  States  military  attache  was  a  captain  in  the  air 
service  of  the  old  Russian  army,  and  shot  down  six  enemy 
planes.  The  kitchen  of  the  Russian  hospital  at  Harbie  is 
run  by  two  Cossack  officers,  General  Bobrikoff  and  Gen- 
eral Beilibin.  At  the  head  of  the  laundry  of  this  hospital  is 
another  general;  while  a  Princess  Galitzin  is  one  of  the 
laundresses.  There  are  very  many  Princess  Galitzins  in 
Europe  just  now.  The  Princess  Galitzin  who  is  the  laun- 
dress is  the  one  whose  brother  was  an  officer  in  the  First 
Cavalry  Guard  Regiment  and  aide  de  camp  to  Grand  Duke 
Nicholas. 

In  the  same  outfit  with  Princess  Galitzin's  brother  was 
Baron  Wolff,  also  an  officer  of  the  First  Cavalry  Guard 
Regiment.  I  ran  into  the  baron  in  the  American  embassy 
one  morning.  He  was  a  tall  pleasant  man  with  a  rather 
worried  look,  for  which  he  could  scarcely  be  blamed.  His 
clothes  were  very  sloppy-looking,  and  had  been  given  to 
him  by  a  Swede  sailor.  The  baron,  in  addition  to  being  an 
aide  de  camp  to  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas,  was  one  of  the 
grand  duke's  closest  friends,  and  was  with  him  constantly 
until  he  left  Russia.  When  Denikine  organized  his  volun- 
teer army,  the  baron  became  an  officer  in  it ;  and  when  the 
army  broke  before  the  Bolsheviks  and  was  evacuated  to 
Constantinople,  he  hunted  around  until  he  got  a  place  as 
seaman  on  a  Russian  barge.  He  had  saved  a  few  belongings, 
and  these  he  had  with  him  on  the  barge.  One  night  it  col- 
lided with  a  tramp  steamer,  and  everything  that  the  baron 
had  left  went  to  the  bottom  of  the  Black  Sea.  He  then  got 
a  ^position  as  night  watchman  in  the  British  warehouse  at 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        195 

Galata;  but,  as  he  explained  with  his  worried  look,  he  was 
too  young  and  strong  to  be  a  night  watchman.  So  he  was 
after  a  job  as  seaman  on  a  United  States  Shipping  Board 
boat ;  and  in  order  to  get  it,  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  have 
an  American  vise.  That  was  why  he  was  calling  at  the 
American  embassy. 

Before  the  revolution,  Count  and  Countess  Tolstoy  were 
wealthy.  They  live  in  a  little  cellar  room  in  Stamboul  now. 
The  count  is  ill.  The  countess,  who  speaks  English,  French 
and  German  perfectly,  supports  her  husband,  herself  and 
an  old  friend  by  teaching  and  by  translating  for  various 
foreign  companies  in  Constantinople. 

Colonel  Verevkin,  of  the  Hussars  of  the  Guards,  does 
odd  jobs  in  the  office  of  the  Russian  Cooperative  Society 
for  one  Turkish  pound  a  day.  His  wife,  who  is  an  excellent 
needlewoman,  does  fine  embroideries  for  English  and 
American  residents  of  Constantinople.  Between  the  two  of 
them  they  figure  on  being  able  to  send  their  fifteen-year-old 
daughter  to  Constantinople  College. 

Olga  Petrovora  Dobrovolskaya  is  the  widow  of  the 
minister  of  justice  of  the  Russian  Empire.  The  Bolsheviks 
took  him  as  a  hostage  in  the  town  of  Piatigorsk,  made  him 
dig  his  own  grave,  stood  him  up  in  front  of  it  and  killed 
him.  They  also  killed  her  son  and  her  son>-in-law.  She 
is  absolutely  down  and  out,  and  exists  entirely  on  charity. 

I  was  driving  along  a  street  in  Pera  one  night  with  two 
young  men  from  the  American  embassy.  "There's  the  man 
that  wanted  the  telescope,"  said  one  of  them,  peering  over 
at  a  vacant  lot,  "and  he's  got  it."  It  seems  that  this  man  had 
wandered  into  the  embassy  some  days  previous  with  a  tale 
to  the  effect  that  he  had  sold  all  his  possessions  for  enough 
money  to  buy  a  telescope,  and  that  he  still  lacked  ten  Turkish 


196  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

pounds  of  the  necessary  sum.  He  wanted  the  telescope,  he 
said,  to  earn  his  living.  His  story  was  heard  without  enthu- 
siasm, because  heartbreaking  tales  are  as  common  in  Con- 
stantinople as  dandelions  in  America.  But  he  was  so  per- 
sistent that  one  of  the  Americans  finally  gave  him  the  ten 
pounds — "to  get  rid  of  him,"  as  Americans  usually  say  when 
they  wish  to  becloud  their  soft-heartedness — and  then  had 
to  fight  with  him  to  prevent  him  from  rewarding  him  with  a 
trick  cane  which,  to  quote  the  American,  was  "so  dressy 
that  a  guy  wouldn't  be  caught  soused  at  a  dervish  dance  with 
it."  And  here  he  was,  giving  the  boobs  of  Constantinople 
a  close-up  at  the  stars  for  five  piastres  a  shot.  It  was  a 
great  relief  to  the  American;  for  he  had  strongly  suspected 
that  his  ten  Turkish  pounds  had  been  used  to  celebrate  the 
Russian  Easter.  Later  I  asked  about  the  telescope  owner 
at  the  Russian  embassy  and  found  out  that  his  name  was 
Sirdascheff,  that  he  had  been  wealthy  before  the  revolution, 
and  had  attained  some  fame  as  an  amateur  astronomer, 
having  maintained  a  private  observatory  that  would  have 
done  credit  to  a  university. 

A  captain  in  one  of  the  best  regiments  of  the  old  Rus- 
sian army  had  hunted  long  and  fruitlessly  for  a  job.  His 
wife  was  about  to  have  a  baby,  and  they  had  no  money  at  all. 
He  had  collected  a  lot  of  bottles;  and  one  afternoon  when 
I  was  in  the  American  embassy  he  was  arranging  with  an 
embassy  interpreter — who  had  also  been  an  officer  in  a  good 
regiment — to  go  with  him  to  the  chief  of  police  to  get  a 
permit  which  would  allow  him  to  set  up  his  bottles  in  a 
vacant  lot  and  charge  the  Turks  five  piastres  for  a  shot  at 
them  with  a  rock  wrapped  in  rags. 

The  American  Y.  M.  C.  A.  has  a  Russian  Social  Center 
up  on  the  Rue  Broussa,  which  leads  off  the  Grand  Rue  de 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES        197 

Pera.  There  are  schools  for  Russian  children  in  this  build- 
ing, and  a  dining-room  where  Russians  who  have  jobs  or 
who  have  a  little  money  left  can  come  and  get  good  food  at 
more  reasonable  prices  than  are  obtainable  in  the  hotels  or 
the  Turkish  or  Russian  restaurants — and  the  prices  in  the 
latter  places  are  unusually  stiff.  Constantinople,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  London,  is  the  most  expensive  city  in 
all  Europe.  In  a  way,  it  is  the  most  expensive  city  in  the 
world,  for  there  are  no  little  places  around  the  corner,  as 
there  are  in  all  other  European  cities,  where  one  can  dine 
cheaply  if  the  necessity  arises.  One  must  either  live  expen- 
sively or  very,  very  wretchedly;  and  that's  another  reason 
why  the  Russians  in  Constantinople  are  out  of  luck. 

I  went  up  to  the  Russian  Social  Center  for  lunch  one 
noon ;  and  before  I  went  up  to  the  dining-room,  I  stopped  to 
get  the  young  American  who,  with  his  wife,  has  charge  of 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  activities.  He  was  busy,  as  are  most  of  the 
relief  workers  in  Constantinople  a  good  part  of  the  time,  in 
wracking  his  brains  in  an  effort  to  find  work  for  the  con- 
stant stream  of  refugees  who  were  passing  before  him.  The 
last  one  to  gain  entrance  to  his  office  was  an  attractive 
young  woman  who  seemed — and  with  reason — to  be  in  the 
depths  of  despair.  Her  husband  was  ill  and  she  had  been 
unable  to  find  work.  They  lived  in  a  small  room  in  Stam- 
boul,  the  rent  was  overdue,  and  on  the  following  Monday 
they  were  to  be  ejected.  "Now  what  can  you  do  about 
people  like  that?"  asked  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  despairingly. 
"It's  simply  impossible  to  find  work  for  that  woman. 
They'll  be  thrown  out  on  the  street,  and  they'll  sleep  in  hall- 
ways or  in  some  old  mosque,  and  God  knows  what  will 
become  of  them."  I  hazarded  the  opinion  that  if  she  could 
not  get  a  job,  she'd  be  forced  to  go  on  the  street  as  so  many 


198  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

others  have  been  forced  to  do.  The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man's  wife 
shook  her  head  sadly.  "Six  months  ago  she  might  have 
done  that,"  said  she,  "but  there's  not  much  use  now :  there's 
too  much  competition."  And  that,  unfortunately,  is  literally 
true,  though  it  may  sound  unpleasantly  cynical  to  the 
prudish. 

In  the  dining-room  one  sees  some  snappily-dressed  peo- 
ple— women,  sometimes,  with  beautiful  Persian  lamb  or 
sealskin  coats.  Usually  these  people  are  on  the  ragged  edge. 
Another  week  or  another  month,  if  they  don't  get  jobs,  and 
their  coats  will  have  to  be  sold  and  they  will  become  public 
charges. 

One  of  the  prettiest  girls  that  I  ever  saw  was  rushing 
cabbage  soup  from  the  kitchen  to  the  tables.  She  was  twen- 
ty-two years  old,  and  her  hair  was  the  color  of  corn-silk  in 
early  September,  and  her  eyes  were  as  blue  as — well,  any 
magazine  editor  who  was  handed  a  colored  photograph 
of  her  to  use  on  the  cover  of  his  magazine  would  burst  into 
tears  of  gratitude.  Around  her  neck  she  had  a  triple  string 
of  pearls  about  as  large  as  buck-shot.  These  were  the  genu- 
ine articles.  The  young  woman  was  the  Princess  Vodod- 
skaya,  a  Tartar  princess  from  Turkestan ;  and  I  don't  mind 
saying  that  since  I  have  seen  her,  the  expression  "Cream  of 
Tartar"  conveys  more  of  a  picture  to  me  than  it  did  some 
time  ago.  She  came  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  for  work  as  soon  as 
she  reached  Constantinople;  for  she  said  that  she  could  be 
happier  if  she  worked  than  she  could  be  if  she  lived  by  selling 
her  pearls.  She  was  offered  a  position  as  dishwasher,  seized 
it  joyfully  and  stuck  to  it  steadily,  though  she  had  a  bad 
case  of  recurrent  malaria.  When  the  opening  came,  she  was 
given  a  place  as  waitress,  which  she  has  held  ever  since.  Her 
position  pays  her  twenty-eight  Turkish  pounds  a  month,  or 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       199 

about  twenty  dollars.  She  gets  her  meals  for  nothing,  and 
pays  eighteen  pounds  a  month,  or  about  twelve  dollars,  for 
her  room.  She  is  a  widow.  Three  months  after  she  was 
married  her  husband  was  killed  fighting  against  the  Bol- 
sheviks. 

In  charge  of  the  dining-room  was  a  slender  and  distin- 
guished-looking lady  about  thirty-two  years  old.  She  was 
good-looking  in  a  pale  Russian  manner;  and  her  glossy 
black  hair  was  plastered  close  to  her  head  and  around  her 
ears  in  a  style  frequently  affected  by  movie  actresses  when 
they  play  Russian  parts.  Her  name  was  Tokareva.  Her 
husband,  who  was  a  helpless  sort  of  person,  though  awfully 
good  at  bridge  and  pursuing  the  wild  boar  and  what-not, 
left  the  entire  management  of  his  huge  estates  on  the  River 
Don  to  her.  These  estates  were  so  large — I  checked  this 
statement  up  with  several  Russians,  because  it  sounded  fishy 
to  me,  too — that  one  had  to  drive  for  five  days  to  get  from 
one  end  of  them  to  another.  Madame  Tokareva  installed 
all  sorts  of  improved  farming  machinery  and  made  a  tre- 
mendous success  of  the  place.  That  was  before  the  Bol- 
sheviks came.  Now  the  estates  aren't  being  farmed  at  all; 
and  Russia's  loss  is  counterbalanced  by  the  fact  that  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  Constantinople  has  a  well-run  dining-room. 

Madame  Strolovsky  waits  on  table  in  the  same  dining- 
room.  Her  husband  also  had  enormous  estates  in  South 
Russia  and  was  attached  to  the  court.  She  and  her  son 
were  evacuated  by  the  British  and  placed  on  the  Island  of 
Lemnos.  Her  son  was  ill  there  for  months  and  she  cooked 
his  meals  over  an  open  outdoor  fire.  Then  she  was  trans- 
ferred to  Constantinople.  The  few  personal  effects  which 
she  had  saved  were  lost  in  the  transfer.  And  when  she 
reached  Constantinople,  she  learned  that  hir  husband  was 


200  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

dead.  In  addition  to  waiting  on  table,  she  gives  French 
and  English  lessons,  so  that  she  may  earn  enough  money  to 
make  sttre  that  her  son  is  well  educated. 

Russians  have  always  been  a  peculiarly  improvident  lot 
of  grown-up  children.  When  they  have  money,  they  spend 
it  without  much  apparent  thought  for  the  morrow ;  and  the 
doctrine  of  I-should-worry  was  postulated  long,  long  ago  in 
Russia  in  the  single  word  "Nichevo,"  which  might  be  trans- 
lated by  the  phrase  "What's  the  odds!"  Tough  as  is  the 
lot  of  the  Constantinople  refugees,  one  sees  the  old  Nichevo 
spirit  cropping  out  constantly.  Those  who  have  a  little 
money  left  are  apt  to  spend  it  freely.  Many  of  those  who 
have  earned  a  little,  and  have  nobody  dependent  on  them, 
blow  in  their  earnings  with  great  enthusiasm.  I  know  of  no 
better  illustration  of  this  than  the  case  of  a  dashing  and 
debonair  Russian  captain,  who  fought  on  every  front  during 
the  war,  spent  many  months  in  Russian,  English  and  Ameri- 
can hospitals,  and  finally  wound  up  his  military  career  with 
Wrangel.  He  was  brought  up  to  be  a  fighter,  and  fighting 
is  all  that  he  knows.  He  got  in  touch  with  friends  in 
America  and  finally  secured  permission  from  the  State 
Department  to  go  there.  His  American  friends  sent  him 
several  hundred  dollars  by  way  of  the  embassy  to  pay  his 
passage.  The  embassy,  however,  refused  to  give  him  the 
lump  sum,  having  had  experience;  but  he  was  told  that  as 
expenses  arose  in  connection  with  his  trip,  the  money  would 
be  advanced  to  him.  His  first  need  was  a  vise  which  would 
cost  ten  dollars.  He  asked  for  the  money,  got  it,  and  started 
down  the  street  for  the  vise.  On  the  way  he  saw,  in  a  tailor's 
window,  a  gorgeous  pair  of  military  breeches.  The  price, 
by  some  fatality,  was  ten  dollars.  The  breeches  were  truly 
magnificent,  and  he  craved  them.  Without  more  ado,  there- 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       201 

fore,  he  walked  into  the  shop  and  bought  them.  And  the 
vise?  Nichevo.  He  should  worry. 

So,  in  spite  of  the  terrible  suffering-  among  the  Russians, 
there  is  a  certain  amount  of  merrymaking  as  well.  Then 
there  are  many  Russian  restaurants  in  which  great  numbers 
of  Russians  have  found  employment;  and  in  these  restau- 
rants there  is  something  doing,  as  our  grandfathers  used  to 
say,  every  minute.  Consequently  if  a  young  and  good-look- 
ing Russian  girl,  or  for  that  matter  a  Russian  girl  who  is 
good-looking  and  not  so  young,  has  acquaintances  aboard 
the  American  destroyers  or  among  the  many  English  and 
American  business  men  in  Constantinople,  she  can  see  some 
pretty  lively  goings-on  in  the  venerable  city  of  the  sultans. 
The  Russian  refugees  in  Rome  were  both  surprised  and 
shocked  last  February  when  a  Russian  girl  came  over  to 
Rome  from  Constantinople  and  expressed  some  contempt 
for  Roman  activities.  "Rome,"  she  said,  "is  like  a  grave- 
yard. You  ought  to  see  Constantinople :  it's  the  gayest  place 
you  can  imagine !"  The  Romans,  who  were  giving  concerts 
and  contributing  old  clothes  for  the  benefit  of  the  Russians 
in  Constantinople,  shook  their  heads  and  didn't  know  what 
to  make  of  it.  They  figured  that  the  signals  must  have  got 
crossed  somehow.  But  they  hadn't.  The  young  woman 
had  either  been  working  in  Russian  restaurants,  or  had  a 
friend  who  had  been  taking  her  to  them.  And  she  was 
quite  right.  For  those  who  have  the  money  to  seek  it,  there 
is  more  and  brisker  action  in  Constantinople  of  an  evening 
than  in  many  other  European  municipalities  which  have 
jazzier  reputations. 

The  snappiest,  as  the  phrase  goes,  restaurant  in  Constan- 
tinople is  the  Muscovy;  and  I  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  no  city  in  the  world  can  produce  its  like.  When  one 


202  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

enters  it,  one's  coat  and  hat  are  taken  by  a  Cossack  colonel 
in  his  long  brown  coat  with  crossed  cartridge  belts,  his 
wrinkled  high  boots  and  his  swanky  silver-hilted  dagger  in 
its  silver  scabbard.  An  embassy  interpreter  who  was  a  lieu- 
tenant in  one  of  the  best  Guards  regiments  helped  me  a  great 
deal  in  Constantinople,  and  he  confessed  that  entering  the 
Muscovy  was  an  ordeal  to  which  he  could  never  accustom 
himself.  He  never  knew  whether  to  hop  to  attention  and 
peel  off  a  military  salute  for  the  colonel,  or  whether  to  ignore 
his  uniform  and  rank  and  hand  over  his  coat  and  hat. 

The  Muscovy's  caviare  and  spike  mackerel  fresh  from 
the  Bosphorus,  and  the  snipe  and  pheasant  and  teal  and 
Chateaubriand,  and  salad  with  Russian  dressing  are  the 
equals  of  any  that  I  have  ever  tasted,  or  even  heard  described 
by  Mr.  Irvin  S.  Cobb,  the  distinguished  bon  vivant.  This 
is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  the  head  of  the  culinary 
works  is  the  chef  of  the  late  czar.  The  czar,  by  the  way, 
seems  to  have  had  as  many  chefs  as  he  did  coachmen.  There 
are  at  least  eighty  clubs  in  America  and  Europe  that  have,  or 
think  they  have,  chefs  of  the  late  czar  working  for  them; 
and  there  are  a  large  number  of  embassies,  legations  and 
private  families  that  are  suffering  from  the  same  harmless 
delusion.  For  my  part,  I  am  backing  the  chef  of  the  Mus- 
covy to  be  the  real,  blown-in-the-bottle  goods  or  cheese,  as 
we  say  in  gastronomic  circles. 

It  isn't  the  food,  however,  which  makes  the  Muscovy 
unique,  but  the  unusual  brand  of  service  which  its  patrons 
receive.  I  don't  know  what  would  happen  to  the  Muscovy 
if  it  were  located  in  New  York,  even  though  it  served  none 
of  the  ruby  or  pale-amber-colored  liquids  with  which  its 
Constantinople  patrons  love  to  dally;  but  I  have  an  idea 
that  there  would  be  a  pitched  battle  on  the  sidewalk  in  front 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       203 

of  it  immediately  after  its  opening  between  the  theatrical 
managers  on  one  side  and  the  movie  producers  on  the  other. 
The  Muscovy  employs  only  Russians  and  it  is  the  most 
desirable  restaurant  in  which  a  Russian  girl  can  work  in 
Constantinople;  for  the  patrons  are  almost  entirely  Ameri- 
cans and  English,  and  the  tips  are  always  generous.  Con- 
sequently every  refugee  in  the  city  who  is  young  and  pretty 
tries  to  get  a  place  as  waitress  there,  and  the  restaurant  has 
the  pick  of  them.  It  not  only  does  some  very  successful 
picking,  but  it  gives  the  positions  to  the  women  who  need  it 
most.  And  the  waitresses  not  only  wait  on  table ;  but  when 
they  aren't  hustling  around  after  food,  they  sit  down  at 
the  table  with  those  on  whom  they  are  waiting  and  dine  with 
them,  if  it  so  happens  that  they  haven't  had  their  dinner. 
They  speak  from  two  to  five  languages  apiece,  these  young 
women,  and  without  exception  they  had  either  high  social 
standing  or  great  wealth  or  both  before  the  revolution.  They 
are  entirely  devoid  of  airs  and  graces  and  proud  haughtiness, 
and  all  of  them  are  excellent  waitresses  and  excellent  dinner- 
companions  as  well.  Three  of  us  were  in  there  one  evening, 
and  the  young  woman  who  waited  on  us  and  sat  down  with 
us  was  a  granddaughter  of  one  of  Russia's  prime  ministers. 
Five  American  naval  officers  at  an  adjoining  table  were 
being  waited  on  by  Madame  Shmeman,  whose  home  was 
in  Petrograd.  Her  husband  was  many  times  a  millionaire, 
and  was  in  the  Finance  Ministry  before  the  revolution.  He 
and  their  two  children  are  in  Constantinople  now.  Both 
of  the  children  are  ill  and  her  husband  can  not  find  work. 
Madame  Shmeman  supports  the  entire  family.  Baroness 
Franc  is  a  very  charming  waitress  at  the  Muscovy.  Her 
husband  was  a  lieutenant  in  a  Guards  regiment.  Madame 
Shaposnekoff  is  another.  Her  husband  was  a  millionaire 


204  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

tea  merchant  in  Moscow.  Madame  Voskresemska  is  another 
who  was  "reech,  reech  as  millions,"  but  now  has  nothing 
except  what  her  services  as  a  waitress  bring  her.  Another 
is  the  daughter-in-law  of  Countess  Tolstoy.  She  was  born 
Princess  Mershersky.  To  give  a  list  of  the  score  and  more 
of  waitresses  at  the  Muscovy  would  be  futile :  they  are  all 
like  the  foregoing. 

The  Muscovy  has  an  orchestra  which  is  conducted  by  the 
first  violinst  of  the  Petrograd  opera.  The  pianist  is  a  con- 
cert player  whose  name  I  couldn't  get.  The  Americans  have 
a  trick  of  going  up  beside  him  and  whistling  their  favorite 
tunes  to  him.  He  orchestrates  them  and  has  the  whole 
orchestra  working  on  them  in  about  five  minutes.  One  is 
apt  to  hear  anything  from  Home  Sweet  Home  to  the  latest 
rag  that  ends  in  the  middle  because  the  ensign  who  whistled 
it  to  the  pianist  couldn't  remember  how  the  last  half  of  it 
went.  Two  singers  who  help  to  entertain  the  diners  are 
Monsieur  Pavolofsky  of  the  Petrograd  People's  Opera  and 
Madame  Volavatz  of  the  Petrograd  Imperial  Marinsky 
Theatre.  And  there  is  a  very  pretty  and  graceful  dancer 
who  is  the  daughter  of  General  Savitzky. 

The  only  time  that  there  has  been  any  trouble  in  the 
Muscovy  was  when  some  of  the  staff  of  the  Soviet  Trade 
representatives  in  Constantinople  went  there  for  dinner  with 
their  wives  one  evening,  just  after  they  arrived.  A  great 
many  jewels  were  in  evidence  in  the  Soviet  party ;  and  one 
of  the  waitresses  cracked  under  the  strain.  "Those  dogs!" 
she  sobbed.  "They  killed  my  brother  and  took  all  that  we 
had.  How  dare  they  come  here  with  those  jewels — with 
our  jewels !"  It  was  quite  dime-novelish ;  and  the  feelings  of 
the  other  diners  were  so  pronounced  and  so  apparent  that  the 
Soviet  representatives  left  early  and  didn't  come  back  again. 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       205 

The  Muscovy  is  only  one  of  many,  but  the  others  fall 
below  it — usually  far  below  it.  These  restaurants  provide 
employment  for  thousands  of  Russians  who  could  otherwise 
find  nothing  to  do;  but  they  hold  no  further  interest  for 
Russians  unless  they  go  to  them  as  guests  of  Englishmen  or 
Americans. 

To  see  how  the  average  Russians  in  or  near  Constanti- 
nople spend  their  evenings  one  has  to  trail  them  when  they 
steal  out  at  night  in  the  tattered  uniforms  which  they  have 
been  unable  to  replace,  and  follow  them  to  their  kennels  and 
burrows  high  up  under  ramshackle  roofs  or  in  the  corners 
of  moldy  basements.  I  found  myself  walking  behind  a 
Russian  officer  and  his  wife  one  evening.  His  overcoat 
was  torn  in  back  at  the  spot  where  the  belt  is  caught  against 
the  coat;  and  through  the  rip,  as  he  passed  beneath  a  street 
lamp,  one  could  see  that  he  had  nothing  beneath  his  overcoat 
but  underwear. 

I  found  a  couple  of  Red  Cross  camionettes  headed  out 
for  the  San  Stefano  refugee  camp  one  morning,  so  I  hopped 
aboard  one  of  them  and  went  along.  I  would  like  to  seize 
this  opportunity  to  do  a  little  boosting  for  the  work  which 
the  Red  Cross  has  done  in  Constantinople.  In  some  sections 
of  Europe  the  Red  Cross  has  had  some  harsh  things  said  of 
it;  but  in  Constantinople  one  never  hears  anything  but  the 
most  heartfelt  praise  for  the  work  which  it  has  done. 
Americans,  British,  French  and  all  the  other  nationalities 
of  that  polyglot  city  speak  of  its  activities  with  heartfelt 
appreciation  and  gratitude.  Practically  all  of  the  hospitals 
and  refugee  institutions  in  the  city  and  the  camps  were 
outfitted  and  supplied  by  the  American  Red  Cross.  In 
all  it  equipped  one  hundred  and  forty-seven  institutions  for 
Constantinople  refugees;  and  in  the  city  proper  for 


206  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

months  it  fed  each  day  six  thousand  refugees  who  were 
destitute.  Of  these,  fourteen  hundred  were  women,  chil- 
dren and  invalids  who  required  special  feeding.  It  gave  out 
over  ten  thousand  men's  suits,  and  outfitted  all  needy  women 
and  children.  All  the  orphanages  were  equipped  with  Red 
Cross  clothing.  Also  it  installed  and  equipped,  in  a  palace 
originally  built  for  a  sultan's  daughter,  a  fine  American 
hospital  with  a  nurses'  training  school  attached.  This  is 
something  which  Americans  in  Constantinople  had  been 
vainly  trying  to  get  for  seventeen  years.  The  deep  respect 
and  esteem  with  which  all  Americans  are  regarded  in  Con- 
stantinople is  due  in  no  small  part  to  the  work  of  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross. 

At  any  rate,  the  camionettes  careened  down  the  hill  from 
Pera,  across  the  Galata  Bridge,  up  past  the  stately  pile  of 
Saint  Sophia,  and  out  through  the  crowded,  crazy  wooden 
houses  of  Stamboul  to  the  ancient  walls  which  for  centuries 
made  Constantinople  the  most  impregnable  city  in  the  world. 
A  short  distance  outside  the  walls,  on  the  edge  of  the  high 
shores  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  stands  a  huddle  of  red 
wooden  buildings  which  used  to  be  Turkish  barracks.  This 
is  the  Lann  Camp  in  the  town  of  Mekri  Keoi.  There  is  a 
pleasant  outlook  from  the  benches  which  the  refugees  have 
built  on  the  edge  of  the  cliffs;  for  through  the  silvery  haze 
of  the  Sea  of  Marmora  loom  the  blue  bulks  of  Prinkipo  and 
Dog  Island  and  Bulwer's  Folly,  and  behind  them  the  distant 
snow-capped  mass  of  Asiatic  Olympus.  The  Lann  Camp 
is  almost  entirely  a  camp  of  intelligentsia ;  and  it  is  clean  and 
trig,  and  as  pleasant  as  such  a  camp  can  be.  The  camionette 
dumped  me  on  the  cliff-edge  and  went  off  about  other  busi- 
ness. There  were  youngsters  playing  on  the  cliff,  clad  in 
obviously  American-knit  sweaters.  A  few  officers  strolled 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       207 

past  me  with  aimless,  vacant  looks  on  their  faces.  A  woman 
looked  around  from  a  bench  and  bobbed  her  head  at  me  with 
the  Russian  greeting  that  sounds  like  "Sdrasch"  to  an 
American  and  means  "How  do  you  do."  I  told  her  that 
my  Russian  was  bad  and  we  spoke  in  German.  Most  of 
the  people  at  Lann  seemed  to  speak  two  or  three  languages. 
The  camp  was  good,  she  said ;  but  there  was  nothing  to  do : 
nothing  at  which  one  could  work.  One  almost  went  mad 
from  inaction  and  emptiness  and  nostalgia.  There  was 
nothing-  to  work  with — nothing.  She  had  left  Sebastopol 
with  only  the  clothes  on  her  back,  and  those  had  been  torn 
to  shreds  on  the  trip  down.  She  was  wearing  American 

clothes thanks  to  the  Americans.     She  would  like  to 

call  Captain  Pramberger  for  me,  and  the  Countess  Kamarov- 
sky ;  for  both  of  them  spoke  English  as  well  as  Russian.  I 
asked  her  about  two  girls  on  a  near-by  bench  who  were 
wearing  American  sweaters.  They  were  perhaps  fifteen 
years  old.  One  was  the  little  Princess  Lilli  Obolensky, 
whose  father  had  been  head  of  the  Melytopol  District — a 
temporary  government  under  Wrangel.  The  other  was 
Anna  Sabouroff,  the  daughter  of  a  wealthy  Crimean 
family.  She  and  her  two  smaller  sisters  and  her  mother  had 
come  out  in  the  Wrangel  evacuation  and  had  had  a  bad  time 
of  it.  They  had  nothing  to  their  names  except  the  clothes 
which  the  Americans  had  given  them. 

Countess  Kamarovsky  came  and  smoked  a  cigarette  with 
me  and  shook  her  head  over  the  stagnation  of  the  refugees 
because  of  lack  of  occupation.  Before  the  revolution  she 
had  big  estates  near  Moscow,  and  she  went  through  some 
terrible  experiences  in  escaping— experiences  which  she 
asked  me  not  to  tell  for  the  sake  of  certain  relatives  who 
still  remain  in  Soviet  Russia.  She  and  Captain  Pramberger 


208  iWHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

teach  French  and  English  to  the  other  Lann  refugees.  The 
days,  she  said,  seemed  terribly  long  because  there  was  noth- 
ing at  which  one  could  busy  himself ;  but  the  evenings  were 
worse.  They  seemed  endless,  she  said. 

The  camionette  came  back  and  we  bumped  to  San 
Stefano  over  the  most  horrible  roads  that  exist,  I  think, 
anywhere  in  the  world,  except  for  roads  that  have  recently 
been  under  shell-fire.  The  only  automobile  that  seems  able 
to  negotiate  Turkish  roads  is  a  certain  small  American 
automobile  which  receives  frequent  contemptuous  mention 
from  the  owners  of  large  machines,  especially  when  one  of 
the  small  ones  whizzes  past  them  in  clouds  of  dust.  Large 
and  expensive  automobiles  have  essayed  the  road  to  San 
Stefano,  only  to  come  limping  home  with  broken  springs  and 
a  general  air  of  dejection.  The  camionette,  however, 
bumped  gaily  onward,  plunging  into  holes  that  threatened 
to  crumble  the  teeth  of  its  passengers,  and  crawling  out  again 
with  cheery  rattlings.  Occasionally  it  left  the  road  and 
cruised  at  large  over  the  barren  fields  on  either  side;  and 
eventually,  squirting  steam  nonchalantly  from  every  pore,  it 
drew  up  with  an  impudent  flourish  in  the  very  face  of  a 
small,  brown-skinned  French  colonial  trooper  who  was 
guarding  the  gate  to  the  camp.  A  pass  had  no  effect  on  him. 
The  Red  Cross  on  the  camionette  failed  to  move  him.  He 
recked  not  that  the  camionette  was  loaded  with  supplies  for 
the  refugees.  He  had  evidently  received  orders  that  no  one 
was  to  pass,  and  he  was  unable  to  see  any  reason  why  he 
should  bother  his  head  further  over  the  matter.  These 
French  colonial  troops  sometimes  evince  traits  that  would 
make  a  saint  burst  into  low  and  searing  profanity,  and 
France  makes  few  friends  out  of  any  one  by  using  them  for 
any  purpose  except  fighting.  We  finally  got  word  to  the 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       209 

commandant  of  the  camp,  who  ordered  the  gates  opened  at 
once. 

San  Stefano  camp  also  lies  a  little  back  from  the  cliffs 
that  rise  from  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  and  the  refugees  are 
housed  in  old  gray  Turkish  barracks.  It  is  a  barren  and 
desolate  place,  and  the  bulk  of  the  refugees  are  enlisted  men 
of  the  Wrangel  army,  though  there  are  many  civilian  famil- 
ies and  many  families  of  under-officers  of  the  new  volun- 
teer Russian  forces.  There  are  few  of  the  intelligentsia 
class  there,  and  no  effort  whatever  seems  to  be  made,  either 
by  the  French  or  by  the  refugees  themselves,  to  keep  the 
camp  clean.  The  space  between  the  barracks  and  the  edge 
of  the  cliff,  which  would  be  a  beautiful  spot  for  the  wounded 
and  the  idle  to  lounge,  is  filled  with  latrines  and  a  profusion 
of  filth;  and  the  breezes  which  blow  from  the  Sea  of  Mar- 
mora serve  only  to  disseminate  an  evil  and  sickening  stench 
through  the  camp.  The  ground  was  dotted  with  soldiers 
who  were  recovering  from  wounds  and  sicknesses,  and  all 
of  the  refugees  were  listless  and  aimless  and  dejected,  with 
nothing  to  do.  A  good  half  of  the  camp  was  given  over  to 
Kalmucks  who  fought  with  Wrangel,  and  their  families. 
The  Kalmucks  are  squat,  brown-skinned,  slant-eyed  people 
from  the  south  of  Russia,  They  are  wonderful  horsemen 
and  vicious  fighters,  but  a  very  low  order  of  people  indeed. 
The  quarters  in  which  they  lived  were  filthy,  which  is 
putting  it  conservatively. 

I  took  the  stories  of  a  score  of  refugees  at  random,  and 
found  them  the  same  stories  of  panic-stricken  dashes  from 
one  part  of  Russia  to  another  to  escape  the  ever-advancing 
march  of  the  Bolshevik  armies.  Here  is  one  of  them — an 
amazing  journey — stripped  to  the  bones  of  the  narrative: 

Doctor  Kousmitsky  was  the  chief  medical  officer  of  the 


210  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Samara-Tashkent  railway.  He  and  his  wife  and  his  twenty- 
one-year-old  daughter  fled  from  their  home  in  Orenburg 
when  the  Bolsheviks  took  it,  with  the  idea  of  traveling  to 
safety  by  rail.  They  reached  Aktyubinsk  and  found  that  the 
Bolsheviks  were  ahead  of  them;  so  they  abandoned  their 
baggage,  left  the  train  and  started  toward  the  southwest. 
They  covered  four  hundred  miles,  mostly  on  foot,  though 
they  were  occasionally  given  rides  on  carts  by  passing  peas- 
ants. When  they  reached  the  steppes  of  the  Kirghiz.,  they 
bought  a  camel,  paying  for  it  with  fifteen  hundred  Kolchak 
roubles,  six  yards  of  cloth  and  one  pound  of  tea.  They 
traveled  about  two  hundred  miles  with  the  camel,  taking 
turns  riding  it.  When  they  reached  the  Caspian  Sea  they 
sold  the  camel  for  fifteen  hundred  roubles,  came  down  the 
Caspian  by  boat,  worked  over  the  Caucasus  to  Rostov,  and 
went  from  Rostov  to  Novorossisk.  They  left  Novorossisk 
in  the  Denikine  evacuation  and  landed  in  the  Crimea;  and 
then,  when  Wrangel  smashed,  they  came  down  to  Constan- 
tinople. What  do  we  know  of  adventure  and  hardships,  we 
people  who  have  trains  in  which  to  travel  and  peaceful 
countrysides  through  which  to  pass  ? 

If  the  Russian  refugees  are  to  continue  to  be  refugees, 
their  most  urgent  need  is  work  to  do.  The  people  who  are 
in  closest  touch  with  the  situation  say  that  until  the  differ- 
ent allied  nations  get  together  on  the  matter  and  see  that 
some  sort  of  occupation  is  provided,  there  is  grave  danger  of 
anarchy  among  these  idle  and  crowded  thousands,  and  the 
formation  of  plague  spots  which  will  quickly  spread  beyond 
control.  The  logical  and  simplest  remedy  for  the  situation 
would  be  for  the  different  Slav  countries  of  Europe  to  take 
all  the  refugees  and  distribute  them,  as  Jugo-Slavia  has 
taken  and  distributed  so  many  thousands.  Unfortunately 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       211 

the  Slav  countries  are  in  bad  shape,  and  are  controlled  for  the 
most  part  by  inefficient,  impotent  and  grafting  governments. 

Relief  organizations  are  doing  all  that  they  can  to  help 
educate  the  children  of  the  refugees.  There  is,  for  example, 
the  Committee  for  the  Rescue  and  Education  of  Russian 
Children.  This  committee,  which  is  an  American  organiza- 
tion with  such  members  as  Charles  W.  Eliot,  C.  R.  Crane, 
Admiral  Bristol  and  Frank  Polk,  has  bought  up  the  libraries 
of  individual  Russians,  secured  houses  in  Constantinople  and 
in  Bulgaria  to  use  as  schools,  and  is  educating  all  that  it  can 
accommodate.  It  has  one  large  school  overlooking  the 
Bosphorus  in  Constantinople,  and  among  the  men  who 
teach  the  refugee  youngsters  are  Goguel,  professor  of  Inter- 
national Law  at  Petrograd  University ;  Petrof f,  head  of  the 
teaching  staff  of  Smolny  Institute;  and  Svetorzaroff,  Min- 
ister of  Public  Instruction  in  the  Don.  Goguel  teaches  Latin 
to  boys  from  fourteen  to  seventeen  years  of  age;  Petrof  f 
teaches  Russian  literature;  and  Svetorzaroff  teaches  Russian 
history  to  the  little  children.  Then  the  American  Friends 
to  Russian  Children,  which  has  the  help  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
the  American  Mennonites  and  the  Near  East  Relief,  has  a 
school  in  another  beautiful  house  overlooking  the  Bosphorus. 
The  directress  of  this  school  is  Nathalie  Goremykine,  whose 
father-in-law,  a  prime  minister  of  Russia,  was  murdered  by 
the  Bolsheviks  in  the  Caucasus. 

A  number  of  Russian  girls  have  been  taken  into  Con- 
stantinople College,  which  is  a  beautiful  and  excellent  Ameri- 
can institution  for  girls,  high  up  on  the  shore  of  the  Bos- 
phorus just  outside  of  Constantinople.  Girl  after  girl  came 
to  me  at  Constantinople  College  and  told  me  her  story — 
such  girls  as  Zidia  Senutkine,  daughter  of  Judge  Nicolas 
Senutkine,  of  Poltava;  Catherine  Perebostchikoff,  daughter 


212  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

of  General  Michael  Perebostchikof f ;  Princess  Nathalie 
Schakowsky,  daughter  of  Prince  Alexis  Nicolaivich 
Schakowsky ;  and  Anna  Maximovitch,  daughter  of  General 
Paul  Maximovitch  of  Tchernigoff.  General  Maximovitch 
is  now  chief  gardener  at  Constantinople  College.  The  stories 
of  all  of  these  girls  were  such  as  to  cause  the  hair  of  an 
American  mother  to  turn  gray — if  such  things  had  hap- 
pened to  one  of  her  own  bairns. 

I  do  not  wish  to  convey  the  idea  that  the  greatest  amount 
of  help  which  is  given  to  Russian  refugees  in  Constantinople 
is  given  by  American  organizations.  The  French  govern- 
ment, up  to  April,  1921,  was  doing  the  most,  because  it  was 
feeding  the  Wrangel  troops  and  supervising  their  distribu- 
tion. A  large  amount,  too,  was  being  done  by  a  combina- 
tion of  Russian  organizations — the  Russian  Red  Cross,  the 
Zemstvos  and  the  Union  of  Towns.  The  two  latter  organi- 
zations were  formed  in  Russia  early  in  the  war  for  the  pur- 
pose of  doing  all  sorts  of  war  work  and  helping  Russian 
soldiers.  Counties  elected  members  of  the  Zemstvos ;  towns 
elected  members  of  the  Towns  Unions.  The  Constantinople 
organizations  operating  under  these  names  are  composed  of 
people  who  were  elected  in  Russia  in  1919  and  who  came  out 
of  Russia  in  the  Denikine  evacuation.  The  combination  of 
the  three  organizations  attends  to  the  foundation  and  the 
management  of  schools,  libraries,  hospitals,  sanatoria,  feed- 
ing stations  and  workshops  for  the  refugees,  and  is  helped 
freely  by  the  American  Red  Cross  and  other  American 
organizations.  Four  former  lord  mayors  of  Moscow  are 
working  with  the  Zemstvos,  as  well  as  Prince  Peter  Dol- 
goroukoff  and  Prince  Paul  Dolgoroukoff  and  many  other 
Russians  who  used  to  be  wealthy  and  great  men  before 
Russia  was  wrecked,  but  who  are  now  penniless. 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       213 

Wherever  one  went  in  Constantinople  in  March  of  1921, 
one  heard  gloomy  speculations  as  to  the  ultimate  fate  of 
the  refugees.  This  was  due  to  the  official  announcement 
on  the  part  of  the  French  that  on  the  first  of  April  they 
would  cease  all  refugee-feeding.  It  was  the  third  announce- 
ment of  the  sort  that  the  French  had  made,  and  there  was  a 
general  hope  that  they  would  weaken  on  carrying  out  their 
third  threat,  just  as  they  had  weakened  on  the  other  two. 
But  the  French  were  very  insistent  that  they  meant  it.  This 
time,  they  said,  they  would  absolutely  and  definitely  cease 
to  provide  food  for  the  refugees.  I  interviewed  a  French 
official  in  a  responsible  position  on  the  subject.  Yes,  he 
said,  it  was  quite  true.  All  feeding  would  cease  on  the  first 
of  April.  The  prospect  was  a  most  unpleasant  one — thou- 
sands of  Russians  isolated  at  Gallipoli  and  on  the  Island  of 
Lemnos  and  at  Tchataldja  with  no  food  and  no  way  to  get 
food.  The  French  official  set  forth  the  French  position  in 
the  matter ;  and  it  must  be  said  that  they  have  some  ground 
for  their  attitude.  At  the  end  of  the  interview  I  told  the 
French  official  that  the  French  couldn't  afford  to  antagonize 
the  world  by  letting  the  Russians  starve  like  rats  in  a  trap. 
He  hedged  a  little.  "Well,"  said  he,  "of  course  we'll  keep 
on  for  a  few  days  after  the  first  of  April ;  but  after  a  few 
days  all  feeding  will  come  to  an  end — absolutely."  The 
French,  of  course,  were  taking  this  attitude  because  they 
felt  that  they  shouldn't  be  forced  to  bear  the  burden  of  feed- 
ing alone,  and  wished  to  force  the  other  Allies  to  share  the 
burden  with  them.  It  is  generally  felt  in  Constantinople 
that  the  refugee  situation  should  be  an  international  affair 
rather  than  the  job  of  any  one  nation,  since  the  Russian 
calamity  was  directly  brought  about  by  the  part  which 
Imperial  Russia  played  in  supporting  the  Allies. 


214  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

The  French  had,  up  to  the  end  of  March,  spent  about 
ten  million  dollars  on  the  Wrangel  evacuation.  They  had 
also  taken  over  all  the  Russian  ships  in  which  the  refugees 
were  evacuated,  and  a  large  amount  of  Wrangel's  supplies. 
The  Russians  claim  that  the  ships  pay  for  all  the  help  given 
to  the  refugees,  and  leave  the  Russians  with  a  large  balance 
in  their  favor. 

General  Wrangel,  during  my  stay  in  Constantinople,  was 
living  aboard  a  Russian  yacht  in  the  Bosphorus.  The 
European  newspapers  report  him  as  being  in  a  different  part 
of  Europe  every  week;  and  every  Monday,  Wednesday  and 
Friday  a  rumor  is  spread  through  Constantinople  that  he  has 
been  assassinated.  When  I  drove  down  to  the  shore  of  the 
Bosphorus  to  the  leading-place  off  which  his  yacht  lies,  my 
chauffeur  informed  me  that  he  had  been  shot  that  morning. 
It  merely  happened  to  be  a  conversational  opening  in  Con- 
stantinople, as  is  the  weather  in  America.  Wrangel  was 
obstinately  refusing  to  leave  Constantinople;  for  he  was 
afraid  that  if  he  did,  his  troops  would  be  shipped  to  places 
where  they  shouldn't  be  shipped. 

He  is  a  tall,  erect,  slender  man,  a  good  four  inches 
over  six  feet  in  height.  He  is  semi-bald,  and  the  remainder 
of  his  hair  is  close-cropped.  He  has  very  fierce  blue  eyes 
and  a  lean,  deeply-lined  face.  He  rasps  out  his  words 
harshly  and  abruptly;  and  even  the  most  pleasant  remarks 
which  he  made  to  my  interpreter  sounded  like  stinging 
rebukes. 

He  said  that  he  wished  to  convey  his  own  thanks,  as 
well  as  those  of  all  the  Crimean  refugees  and  all  the  refugees 
in  Europe,  to  the  American  people  for  the  great  and  gener- 
ous help  which  they  had  given  to  him  and  those  who  had 
come  with  him  to  Constantinople.  He  then  went  on  to  speak 


r.nirlfty  of  Aturrican   Red  Cro»» 

General  Baron  Peter  \\rangel 


One  of  Wrangel's   ships  coming  into   Constantinople.     Standing  on  the 
upper  deck  are  three  generals  and  an  admiral. 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       215 

of  his  army.  He  wished,  he  said,  to  keep  it  together  as  a 
fighting  force  because  he  felt  sure  that  the  summer  of  1921 
would  see  the  fall  of  Bolshevism  in  Russia,  and  because 
when  that  time  came  there  would  be  nothing  to  prevent  Rus- 
sia from  crumbling  into  absolute  anarchy  unless  his  trained 
troops  could  be  thrown  into  the  country  as  a  police  force. 
If  Wrangel's  judgment  of  the  situation — which  he  declares 
is  based  on  the  report  of  his  confidential  agents  in  Russia — 
is  correct,  his  troops  should  unquestionably  be  held  together. 
Most  observers,  however,  believe  that  the  Soviet  govern- 
ment is  so  strongly  entrenched  that  it  will  be  able  to  hang 
on  for  a  long,  long  time. 

In  addition  to  keeping  an  army  nucleus,  he  went  on,  he 
was  keeping  a  governmental  nucleus  as  well;  for  he  had 
organized  groups  of  men  who  would  be  competent  to  step 
into  the  ruins  left  by  the  Bolsheviks,  and  carry  on  the  affairs 
of  the  nation  without  loss  of  time — a  parliamentary  group, 
an  educational  group,  commerce  and  trade  groups  and  fi- 
nance groups.  He  had  organized  a  Russian  council,  in  which 
were  represented  all  of  the  political  parties  of  old  Russia 
with  the  exception  of  absolute  monarchists  and  extreme 
Socialists.  These  he  refused  to  include.  He  felt  that  he 
alone  was  maintaining  the  last  dependable  forces  of  great 
Russia,  and  that  the  civilized  nations  of  the  world,  who 
realized  the  rottenness  of  Bolshevism,  should  assist  him  in 
the  attempt,  rather  than  hinder  him. 

The  French,  he  said,  had  made  three  proposals  in  regard 
to  his  troops :  that  they  should  be  shipped  to  South  America, 
chiefly  to  Brazil  and  Peru;  that  they  should  be  scattered 
through  the  French  Foreign  Legion;  and  that  they  should 
be  sent  back  to  Soviet  Russia.  He  would  not  decide  the 
first  off-hand,  because  many  northern  people,  notably  the 


216  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Germans,  had  declared  that  people  from  the  north  could  not 
stand  the  South  American  climate.  As  for  the  second,  there 
was  room  for  so  few  of  his  men  in  the  French  Foreign 
Legion  that  the  proposition  was  scarcely  worth  considering. 
The  third  proposal — to  return  all  his  troops  to  Soviet  Russia 
— he  would  accept  if  the  French  would  permit  his  men  to 
return  with  arms.  In  that  case  he  would  go  at  their  head 
and  they  would  fight  their  way  in  or  die.  The  French 
said  that  they  must  go  unarmed ;  and  under  no  circumstances 
would  he  advise  his  men  to  do  this.  Wrangel's  own  plan,  if 
he  could  not  retain  his  men  as  the  nucleus  of  a  future  Rus- 
sian army,  was,  he  said,  gradually  to  send  them  to  Serbia, 
Hungary  and  other  Central  European  countries  as  bulk- 
labor  for  farming,  manufacturing,  railroad-  and  road-making 
and  similar  enterprises.  He  considered  that  the  determina- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  French  to  stop  feeding  his  people  was 
an  attempt  to  get  other  nations  to  relieve  them  of  the  burden. 
He  also  seemed  quite  sure  that  it  was  somehow  connected 
with  the  establishing  of  trade  relations  between  Soviet  Rus- 
sia and  certain  European  nations. 

From  Wrangel  I  went  to  the  high  French  official  of 
whom  I  have  spoken  before.  He  started  off  with  a  long 
lecture  on  the  long-standing  desire  on  the  part  of  Russia  to 
gain  control  of  Constantinople — a  desire  which  was  keen  at 
the  time  of  Catharine  the  Great — and  wound  up  by  saying 
that  it  was  a  very  strange  thing  that  Russia  is  to-day  nearer 
to  realizing  her  desires  than  at  any  other  time  in  her  history, 
inasmuch  as  there  is  a  Russian  army  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  thousand  men  under  the  walls  of  the  city.  He 
must  have  been  speaking  figuratively  or  something ;  for  the 
army,  instead  of  being  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  thousand 
men  was  about  fifty  thousand  men ;  and  most  of  them  were 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       217 

marooned  on  a  desert  island  and  a  barren  peninsula  instead 
of  being  under  the  walls.  I  told  him  that  a  Russian  who 
felt  elated  over  the  nearness  of  these  troops  to  Constan- 
tinople would  need  to  have  the  top  of  his  head  opened  with  a 
stone-drill  so  that  his  brain  could  be  located  and  examined. 
He  looked  at  me  with  diplomatic  gravity  and  went  on  to  say 
that  three  thousand  of  the  men  had  already  returned  to 
Soviet  Russia  of  their  own  volition,  and  that  the  captain  of 
the  ship  that  took  them  back  had  reported  that  they  were 
received  with  open  arms  by  the  Bolsheviks  and  treated  to  a 
grand  carousal  or  Russian  souse-party  as  a  welcome  home. 
I  told  him  that  the  Russian  General  Staff  in  Constantinople 
had  informed  me  on  what  they  considered  good  authority 
that  of  these  three  thousand  men,  seventy- four  had  been  shot 
on  landing,  over  nine  hundred  had  been  placed  in  the  Red 
Army,  twelve  hundred  had  been  mobilized  as  Labor  Battal- 
ions, about  two  hundred  had  been  turned  loose  without  any 
restrictions,  while  the  remainder  had  been  sent  to  their  own 
villages  and  handed  over  to  the  Chesvi  Chaika  or  Extraor- 
dinary Commissions  for  trial  on  the  charge  of  treason.  The 
French  official  denied  this  with  a  scornful  laugh,  and  said 
that  it  was  true  that  those  who  returned  were  told  that  if 
they  misbehaved,  they  would  be  sent  to  the  Donetz  mining 
districts  and  put  to  work  in  the  mines,  but  that  they  had  not 
been  othenvise  threatened  or  molested.  The  reader  can  take 
his  pick  of  the  two  claims :  I  had  no  means  of  finding  out 
which  possessed  the  larger  trace  of  truth.  I  have  a  hunch, 
but  hunches  aren't  reliable. 

The  official  went  on  to  say  that  Wrangel  had  been 
repeatedly  warned,  since  his  arrival  in  Constantinople,  that 
the  feeding  would  have  to  stop  in  April  and  that  the  army 
would  have  to  be  distributed  by  that  time;  and  then  he 


218  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

claimed  that  no  attention  had  been  paid  to  the  warning 
because  Wrangel  always  hoped  that  the  Bolsheviks  would 
collapse  on  the  following  week.  "All  that  they  want  to  do," 
he  declared  passionately,  "is  to  sit  on  an  island  and  do  noth- 
ing! They  have  thousands  of  excuses  for  not  going  to 
Brazil,  and  say  they  want  to  investigate  before  they  go. 
Why  should  they  ?  Germany  at  the  height  of  her  prosperity 
sent  thousands  of  colonists  to  Brazil.  Isn't  that  good 
enough  for  them?  When  there's  an  urgent  necessity,  you 
take  the  needed  steps  to  fill  the  need.  If  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
had  demanded  a  previous  investigation  of  America  before 
they  went  there,  they'd  still  be  in  England.  The  French 
policy  here  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  United  States.  We 
recognize  no  Wrangel  army  and  no  Wrangel  government  in 
Constantinople.  Wrangel  and  his  army  are  merely  refugees. 
They  were  disarmed :  we  are  under  no  obligation  whatever 
to  them :  our  only  motive  in  feeding  them  has  been  that  of 
humanity.  We  have  spent  over  one  hundred  million  francs 
on  food  alone — not  on  their  evacuation  and  transportation. 
France  is  poor  from  the  war  and  she  can  not  afford  to  con- 
tinue." 

I  reminded  him  that  the  Russians  claim  that  the  Russian 
ships  and  supplies  taken  over  by  the  French  more  than  paid 
for  that  expenditure.  He  smiled  scornfully.  "But  do  you 
realize,"  he  said,  "the  great  number  of  millions  that  we  spent 
on  outfitting  Wrangel  for  his  campaign?"  I  hadn't  made 
any  attempt  to  realize  it;  for  the  French  gambled  on 
Wrangel,  and  I  had  always  thought  that  one  should  accept 
his  gambling  losses  without  further  outcry.  I  still  think  so, 
too. 

These  are  the  two  sides  of  the  case,  somewhat  sketchily 
drawn  in.  There  was  a  third  side,  for  which  one  had  to  go 


THE  CONSTANTINOPLE  REFUGEES       219 

to  the  Soviet  Trade  representative  in  Constantinople — a 
man  named  Koudisch.  He  was  a  tall,  slender,  exquisitely 
dressed  person  who  affected  a  powerful  brand  of  toilet 
powder  and  had  a  pretty  taste  in  perfumes.  I  had  an 
appointment  with  him  at  nine  o'clock  one  morning  and  kept 
it  to  the  minute,  to  show  him  that  a  person  didn't  have  to  be 
a  Bolshevik  to  get  up  as  early  as  half  past  eight  and  other- 
wise show  signs  of  being  willing  to  do  a  little  work  occasion- 
ally. He  was  in  his  bath,  however,  and  kept  me  waiting 
until  five  minutes  of  ten  while  he  prinked  and  powdered  and 
scented  himself.  This  ought  to  be  a  terrible  blow  to  people 
who  visualize  the  proletariat  as  hard  guys  with  grimy  hair, 
made-up  neckties  and  fringes  on  their  trousers-cuffs.  If 
this  Constantinople  Bolshevik  representative  was  as  repre- 
sentative as  his  credentials  claimed,  one  of  the  ear-marks  of 
a  Bolshevik  leader  will  soon  be  pink-ribboned  undergar- 
ments, peek-a-boo  vests  and  spats  with  Mechlenburg  lace 
ruchings. 

I  asked  the  handsome  fellow  about  the  manner  in  which 
refugees  would  be  received  if  they  returned  from  Constan- 
tinople to  Soviet  Russia.  "I  can  assure  you,"  he  told  me  in 
a  frank  manly  way,  "that  there  will  be  no  rancor  in  the 
minds  of  any  Russian  toward  the  deluded  men  who  were 
merely  obeying  the  orders  of  their  officers.  We  shall  wel- 
come them  back.  But  it  will  be  different  for  the  men  who 
led  them  astray — the  high  officers  who  ordered  them  to 
proceed  against  us.  Those  men  were  traitors  to  Russia  and 
they  must  be  tried  as  traitors  if  they  return."  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  leeway  in  the  Bolshevik  interpretation  of  what 
constitutes  a  traitor. 

A  few  weeks  after  my  interview  with  Koudisch,  the 
Allies  woke  up  one  morning  to  find  that  Bolshevik  agents 


220  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

had  placed  bombs  beneath  most  of  Constantinople's  public 
buildings  and  good  hotels.  Koudisch  was  at  the  bottom  of 
it,  and  was  ejected  from  the  city  with  marked  enthusiasm. 
He  was  obviously  an  excellent  representative  of  Bolshevik 
ideas  and  ideals. 

Meanwhile  the  refugees  live  on  from  day  to  day.    Poor 
people !    God  help  them — if  nobody  else  will ! 


They  Sometimes  Come  Back 

MODERN  GREECE  is  celebrated  for  her  ancient  ruins  and 
for  her  unscrupulous  politicians — who  might  with  some 
reason  be  classed  as  modern  ruins.  The  remains  of  the 
unrivaled  temples  on  the  Acropolis  are  fitting  monuments 
to  the  race  which  produced  many  of  the  world's  greatest 
sculptors,  dramatists,  poets,  statesmen,  philosophers  and 
soldiers,  and  which  ruled  the  known  world.  The  unscru- 
pulous politicians  are  fitting  reminders  of  the  horrible 
results  of  attempting  to  mix  a  score  of  races  in  a  human 
melting-pot.  It  can't  be  done  successfully,  whether  the 
attempt  be  made  in  Persia,  Italy,  South  America,  or  North 
America;  and  those  who  think  that  it  can  are  entitled  to 
study  history,  biology  and  Greece,  and  then  indulge  in 
another  think. 

Our  steamer  from  Constantinople  waddled  across  the 
Sea  of  Marmora  and  out  through  the  Dardanelles  almost  six 
years  to  the  day  after  that  terrible  twenty-fifth  of  April, 
1915,  when  the  British  transports  spewed  their  human 
freight  into  the  water  under  the  barren  Gallipoli  cliffs,  and 
the  German  and  Turkish  machine  guns  on  the  cliff-edge 
snapped  out  their  lives  in  a  welter  of  bloody  foam.  All 
around  that  barren  point  the  hulks  of  the  transports  were 
still  lying  where  the  British  beached  them  in  the  landing — 

221 


222  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

beached  them  and  deliberately  cut  off  all  chance  of  retreat. 
The  early  morning  sun  was  bright  on  the  flat  sea,  a  soft 
breeze  blew  out  of  the  yEgean,  the  sky  was  silvery-blue  and 
cloudless.  It  was  a  day  to  make  all  things  look  pleasant  and 
harmless.  But  the  silent  and  rusted  transports,  ranged  in  a 
drunken  half-circle  in  the  calm  sea  at  the  cliff's  base,  were 
the  grimmest  remnant  of  all  the  many  grim  remnants  of  the 
late  war  that  I  have  seen,  and  the  greatest  monument  to 
man's  heroism. 

In  the  London  papers  on  every  April  twenty-fifth 
appear  columns  of  memorial  notices  which  read  about  like 
this:  "DUBLIN  FUSILIERS.  In  honored  and  grate- 
ful remembrance  of  the  Officers  and  Men  of  the  Dublin 
Fusiliers  who  won  undying  fame  and  were  killed  during 
the  landing  from  the  'River  Clyde'  at  V  Beach,  Gallipoli. 
25th  April,  1915.  May  they  rest  in  peace.  They  achieved 
the  impossible."  Or,  instead  of  the  Dublin  Fusiliers,  it  may 
be  the  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers  or  the  Lancashire 
Fusiliers  or  the  Essex  Regiment  or  the  Royal  Fusiliers  or 

the  Hampshire  Regiment The  awful  length  of  the 

columns  tells  an  impressive  but  uncolored  story  of  the  hor- 
rors of  the  Gallipoli  landing;  but  the  merest  glimpse  of  the 
shattered  transports  beneath  the  frowning  cliffs  and  the 
thought  of  the  thousands  who  fought  their  way  ashore 
through  the  blood-stained  water  sends  a  sickening  chill 
through  the  most  hardened  spine.  I  mention  these  things 
because  Constantine  was  king  of  Greece  when  they  hap- 
pened. Constantine,  King  of  Greece,  was  hindering  the 
Allies  at  every  step  and  playing  the  German  game  at  every 
opportunity.  And  Constantine  has  come  back  from  the  exile 
into  which  the  Allies  drove  him,  and  is  king  of  Greece  again. 

The  steamer  waddled  on  past  the  barren  shores  of  a  few 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          223 

of  the  widely-sung"  Isles  of  Greece,  as  bleak  and  bare  and 
inhospitable-looking  as  the  back  of  an  enlarged  whale,  and 
crept  slowly  by  the  symmetrical  white  marble  cone  of  Mount 
Athos,  that  peculiar  stronghold  of  the  Greek  church  where 
for  centuries  thousands  of  monks  have  existed,  completely 
removed  from  the  females  of  all  species,  with  the  sole  excep- 
tion of  insects  and  birds.  The  monks  of  Mount  Athos  have 
never  yet  been  able  to  issue  an  edict  which  would  be  obeyed 
by  lady  fleas,  flies  and  other  winged  wanderers;  but  lady 
cats  and  dogs  and  horses  and  goats  are  unknown  upon  its 
silent  slopes.  No  cow  mellows  the  twilight  with  her  ru- 
minative moo;  no  hen  roams  fussily  about  the  countryside 
to  make  the  gentle  hermits  speculate  on  the  reasons  which 
lead  her  to  cross  the  road.  Then  the  steamer  turned  north 
into  the  Gulf  of  Salonika,  at  the  northern  tip  of  which  lies 
the  city  of  Salonika,  northernmost  of  the  large  Greek  ports, 
known  to  the  ancients  as  Thessalonica.  To  the  church  of 
this  ancient  city  St.  Paul  addressed  his  two  epistles  to  the 
Thessalonians. 

Now  all  modern  Greeks,  whether  you  find  them  in  Con- 
stantinople, Turkey,  or  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  or  London, 
England,  or  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  or  Rome,  Italy, 
are  politicians  first  and  business  men  or  laborers  afterward. 
And  as  politicians  they  are  divided  into  two  strict  and  pas- 
sionate camps:  they  are  either  Royalists,  shrieking  wildly 
and  deafeningly  for  King  Constantine  and  cursing  all  the 
doings  of  a  man  named  Venizelos  with  black  and  searing 
curses;  or  they  are  Venizelists,  howling  hysterically  for 
Venizelos  and  hating  King  Constantine  with  their  haters 
wide  open  and  hitting,  as  one  might  say,  on  every  cylinder. 
Many  New  England  barber-shops  and  bootblack  stands,  four 
thousand  miles  removed  from  the  front-line  cafes  of  Greek 


224  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

politics,  have  been  wrecked  during  the  past  four  years 
because  of  internecine  strife  between  their  Greek  owners 
and  patrons  over  the  Constantine-Venizelos  question.  In 
Greece  itself  this  political  frenzy  becomes  so  poisonous  that 
either  political  party  is  almost  willing  to  wreck  the  entire 
nation  if  by  so  doing  it  can  embarrass  the  other  party. 

Venizelos  is  a  Greek  from  the  Island  of  Crete.  He  was 
prime  minister  of  Greece  during  the  Balkan  Wars;  and  by 
cleverly  and  persistently  advertising  King  Constantine,  he 
made  a  national  hero  of  him.  He  was  strongly  pro-Ally 
during  the  war.  When  Constantine  played  the  traitor  to 
the  Allies,  Venizelos  headed  a  bloodless  revolution  and  led 
Greece  into  the  war  on  the  Allies'  side.  He  won  striking 
victories  for  Greece  at  the  Peace  Conference,  and  showed 
himself  thoroughly  able  to  cope  with  such  experienced  diplo- 
mats and  politicians  as  Lloyd-George,  Clemenceau  and 
Orlando.  By  his  unaided  efforts  he  built  Greece  from  a 
small  and  insignificant  country  to  a  large  and  potentially 
wealthy  country.  Venizelos  and  a  man  named  Trikoupes, 
Prime  Minister  of  Greece  off  and  on  from  1882  to  1894, 
are  the  only  two  statesmen  produced  by  the  entire  Greek 
nation  in  hundreds  of  years.  Venizelos,  so  far  as  can  be 
discovered,  is  to-day  the  one  Greek  in  public  life  who 
possesses  ideals,  vision,  courage  and  broad-mindedness. 

In  Salonika  one  gets  his  first  glimpse  of  the  lengths  to 
which  the  Royalists  of  Greece  will  go  to  discredit  and  disre- 
gard the  Venizelists. 

When  Venizelos  was  in  power,  he  brought  large  numbers 
of  Greeks  from  the  Greek  Caucasus,  which  is  a  part  of 
Southern  Russia  lying  over  to  the  east  of  the  Black  Sea, 
back  to  Greece  for  the  purpose  of  populating  the  plains 
of  Macedonia  and  Thrace  which  had  been  depopulated  by 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          225 

the  Balkan  Wars  and  the  Great  War,  and  also  for  the  pur- 
pose of  having  a  Greek  population  in  these  districts  to  back 
up  the  claims  which  he  might  make  before  the  Council  of 
London.  These  returning  Greeks,  all  of  whom  were  for 
the  most  part  poor  farmers  with  their  families,  were  landed 
at  Salonika,  placed  temporarily  in  the  barracks  used  by  the 
British  during  the  war,  and  distributed  gradually  to  the 
farm-lands  of  Thrace. 

These  colonists  started  returning  to  Greece  in  July,  1920. 
Under  the  Venizelist  government  the  scheme  worked  well. 
In  November  of  1920,  Venizelos  was  defeated  at  the  polls 
and  King  Constantine  was  recalled  from  his  hideous  exile 
in  a  Swiss  hotel  that  had  only  sixty-five  palm-trees  in  its 
dining-room  and  served  ice-cream  at  only  two  meals  a  day. 
Immediately,  in  so  far  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so,  all  Veni- 
zelists  were  removed  from  power  and  all  Venizelist  plans 
were  given  a  swift  and  well-aimed  kick. 

Since  the  program  of  bringing  Greeks  from  the  Greek 
Caucasus  to  colonize  Thrace  was  a  Venizelos  program,  the 
new  Royalist  crowd  refused  to  ship  them  from  Salonika  into 
the  interior.  So,  starting  in  November,  1920,  these  penniless 
Greek  families  began  to  back  up  in  the  camp  like  a  dammed 
river.  They  overflowed  the  British  barracks  into  a  big  tent 
camp,  and  they  overflowed  the  second  camp  into  a  third.  I 
came  to  Salonika  in  April,  1921.  There  were  then  five 
camps  with  more  than  twenty-six  thousand  persons  crammed 
into  them;  and  they  presented  one  of  the  most  shocking 
spectacles  that  I  have  ever  seen.  The  meager  dole  of  food 
that  the  Royalists  were  dribbling  out  to  them  each  day  was 
insufficient  to  support  life;  typhus  and  almost  every  other 
disease  known  to  man  were  running  riot  through  the  camps ; 
and  the  death  rate  was  one  hundred  and  eight  per  cent. 


226  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

That  is  to  say,  the  people  were  dying-  so  rapidly  that  all  of 
them,  if  things  continued  as  they  were,  would  be  dead  in 
less  than  one  year's  time.  A  short  time  before  I  arrived  the 
death  rate  had  been  as  high  as  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight 
per  cent.  The  Royalists  left  their  own  people  to  starve  and 
rot  and  die  in  these  Salonika  camps;  while  down  in  Athens 
they  poured  out  money  in  rivers  on  a  pinchbeck  king  and  on 
glittering  fetes  in  honor  of  his  return  and  on  a  criminal  and 
ruinous  war  in  the  heart  of  Asia  Minor. 

I  went  out  through  these  camps  on  a  balmy  April  morn- 
ing with  Major  Hillas  and  Captain  Van  Camp  of  the 
American  Red  Cross,  which  was  doing  what  it  could  to  help 
the  situation,  and  to  force  the  king  and  his  rotten  govern- 
ment to  take  care  of  their  own  people.  Salonika  is  a  dirty, 
desolate  abomination  of  a  city,  scarred  by  a  recent  devastat- 
ing fire  and  backed  by  barren  hills.  Away  to  the  east  of  it 
stretches  a  wide  and  wind-swept  plain,  sweeping  back  from 
the  water's  edge;  and  in  the  middle  of  the  plain  are  the  old 
wooden  barracks  that  the  British  troops  occupied  during  the 
war.  These  barracks  had  almost  no  ventilation.  The  win- 
dow-openings were  closed  with  coverings  of  tin  or  wood.  A 
family  of  five  persons  was  allowed  a  space  eight  feet  long 
by  five  feet  wide.  The  stench  in  the  buildings  was  very  bad 
and  disease  ran  through  them  like  fire  through  dead  grass. 
There  were  no  trained  nurses,  and  only  one  of  the  few 
Greek  doctors  was  of  any  use  at  all.  The  only  sanitary 
arrangements  that  existed  had  literally  been  jammed  down 
the  camps'  throats  by  the  American  Red  Cross.  Men 
weren't  considered  sick  in  the  camps  until  they  were  within 
one  day  of  being  dead.  Children  with  measles,  scarlet  fever, 
diphtheria  and  other  diseases  ran  free  through  the  camps. 
A  family  might  eat  dinner  together  on  one  day ;  and  by  din- 


Courtesy  of  American  Red  Croig 
Exterior  of  the  old  British  barracks  at  Salonika. 


('oiirifty  of  American  Red  Crou 
Greek  Caucasians  starving  in  the  Salonika  barracks. 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  227 

ner-time  of  the  following  day  the  whole  family  might  be — 
and  frequently  was — dead. 

These  people  were  Greeks,  and  the  people  responsible 
for  their  pitiful  state  were  Greeks.  It  was  all  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  Royalists  hated  the  Venizelists.  That  fact 
should  always  be  borne  in  mind. 

Where  the  plain  falls  away  to  the  water's  edge,  there 
were  two  tent  camps.  On  the  plain  above  the  cliff  there 
were  nine  hundred  small  conical  tents  with  fifteen  people 
jammed  into  each  tent.  On  the  beach  below  there  were  one 
hundred  more  tents.  The  beach  camp  was  the  receiving 
station,  and  more  unfortunates  were  coming  ashore  from 
two  steamers  as  we  stood  on  the  cliff's  edge  and  looked 
down  at  them.  About  ninety  people  were  standing  in 
line.  They  were  waiting  to  get  water  from  the  single  water- 
tap  that  exists  in  the  lower  camp.  The  British  installed  a 
splendid  water-supply  system  in  these  camps ;  but  the  Greeks 
let  it  go  to  rack  and  ruin.  Two  men  walked  by  us  with  a 
man  on  a  stretcher  between  them.  He  was  sitting  up  on  the 
stretcher  with  a  wild  glare  in  his  eyes,  moving  his  hands 
weakly.  They  put  him  down  in  an  open  sun-baked  field,  and 
he  died.  Just  below  us,  at  the  foot  of  the  cliff,  was  a  white- 
washed shed  twenty  feet  long  and  ten  feet  wide.  Four  dead 
men  were  sprawled  alongside  it.  That  morning  one  of  the 
Red  Cross  workers  had  taken  forty-two  bodies  out  of  it. 
The  bodies  had  been  slid  in  through  the  windows  during 
the  night,  so  that  the  door  had  been  jammed  shut  by  their 
weight  and  numbers.  Three  men  had  been  required  to  force 
the  door  inward. 

Thousands  of  the  people  in  the  camps  had  no  clothes. 
In  one  tent  a  Red  Cross  worker  found  several  women 
huddled  under  straw  without  any  clothes  at  all.  Their  onty 


228  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

clothes  had  been  destroyed  in  the  delouser.  Two  girls 
among  them  had  pneumonia.  Five  thousand  people  in  the 
camps  had  so  few  clothes  that  they  were  unable  to  go  into 
Salonika  in  the  daytime.  We  went  into  the  hospital  of  the 
tent  camp.  It  had  no  beds.  Four  women  were  lying  in 
blankets  on  the  bare  floor,  dying.  Thirty  dead  men  and 
women  were  carried  out  of  this  hospital  on  the  preceding 
day.  The  Greeks,  implored  by  the  American  Red  Cross  to 
send  more  doctors,  replied  that  their  doctors  were  needed  in 
Asia  Minor.  These  are  the  barest  and  the  least  offensive 
outlines  of  the  Salonika  situation.  Colonel  Olds,  head  of 
the  Red  Cross  in  Europe,  and  a  representative  of  the  Ameri- 
can Relief  Administration  visited  Salonika  shortly  before 
I  did.  They  immediately  wired  their  organizations  that  con- 
ditions in  these  camps  were  a  disgrace  to  the  Greek  nation 
and  that  the  loss  of  child  life  in  them  was  the  greatest  they 
had  ever  seen. 

The  conditions  exist  because  Constantine,  King  of  the 
Greeks,  came  back ;  and  because  his  followers  were  given  the 
chance  to  show  their  hatred  for  Venizelos  and  all  his  works. 

From  Salonika  to  Piraeus,  the  port  of  Athens,  is  a  day's 
trip  to  the  south,  past  barren  hill-slopes  almost  devoid  of 
human  habitations,  and  past  mile  after  mile  of  untilled 
fields.  The  Greeks,  like  many  other  people  from  South- 
eastern Europe,  seem  absolutely  incapable  of  developing  their 
own  resources.  And  like  the  rest  of  the  incompetents  of 
Southeastern  Europe,  their  chief  ambition  in  life  is  to  rush 
to  America,  where  a  sturdier  race  of  people  has  developed 
industries  and  a  civilization  that  will  provide  them  with  a 
maximum  of  money  in  return  for  a  minimum  of  enterprise. 
The  Greek  farms  produce  pitifully  poor  crops,  but  only 
because  the  soil  lacks  nitrogen  and  phosphates.  Only  once  in 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          229 

every  four  or  five  years  does  the  land  produce  a  decent  crop. 
Doctor  Hopkins  of  the  University  of  Illinois  studied  the 
Greek  soil  and  found  that  if  the  farmers  would  plant  a  cer- 
tain sort  of  white  clover  and  turn  it  under,  the  land  would 
produce  a  one-hundred-per-cent.  larger  crop  on  the  follow- 
ing year.  Yet  the  Greeks  won't  do  it.  They  prefer  to  let 
things  happen  as  they  have  always  happened.  They  are 
extreme  individualists,  out  for  themselves  first  and  suspi- 
cious of  every  one  else.  Every  Greek  organization  is  an 
organization  of  individualists,  and  the  members  may  be — 
and  usually  are — knifing  one  another  in  a  week's  time. 
Every  Greek  politician  regards  his  job  as  a  means  of  get- 
ting a  better  job,  and  never  as  an  opportunity  to  serve  his 
country  or  his  constituents.  These  statements  are  sweep- 
ing; but  sweeping  as  they  are,  they  are  true.  Cooperation 
is  almost  impossible  to  get  in  Greece ;  and  organizing  ability, 
as  we  know  it  in  America,  is  peculiarly  rare.  Greece  pro- 
duces a  good  olive  oil,  for  example.  Yet  the  Greeks  haven't 
the  ability  to  market  it  to  advantage.  They  sell  it  to  France 
for  a  small  profit;  and  the  French  make  a  large  profit  by 
bottling  it  and  selling  it  to  the  United  States.  They  haven't 
been  able  to  develop  the  grading  and  the  marketing  of  their 
lemons  and  oranges.  Venizelos  recognized  these  things,  and 
had  laid  plans  which  he  hoped  would  remedy  them — being 
Greece's  only  statesman.  With  Venizelos  gone,  the  plans 
are  discarded  and  forgotten,  for  the  rest  of  the  Greeks  are 
only  politicians. 

As  one  sails  up  to  Piraeus,  one  finds  it  hard  to  believe 
that  the  small  green  plain  directly  ahead,  with  the  insignifi- 
cant-looking city  huddled  around  the  two  hills  in  the  center 
of  it,  was  the  Heart  of  the  World  once  upon  a  time.  The 
plain  is  the  Plain  of  Attica,  and  the  two  hills  are  the  Acrop- 


230  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

olis  and  Lycabettus,  and  the  city  around  them  is  Athens. 
From  the  people  who  built  this  city  and  the  other  great 
Hellenic  cities,  and  made  Greece  the  mistress  of  the  world — 
fair-haired  people  who  came  down  into  Greece  from  the 
distant  north — came,  in  the  space  of  a  few  hundred  years, 
men  whose  names  will  be  great  so  long  as  books  are  made 
and  people  exist  to  read  them — names  familiar  to  every  high- 
school  boy:  such  names  as  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Eschylus, 
Aristophanes,  Phidias,  Praxiteles,  Aristotle,  Plato,  Hip- 
pocrates, Pythagoras,  Socrates,  Demosthenes,  Heraclitus, 
Empedocles,  Democritus,  Anaxagoras,  Anacreon,  Sappho 
and  a  host  of  others.  And  when  Greece  had  become  great 
through  the  greatness  of  her  soldiers  and  statesmen  and 
scientists  and  dramatists,  and  her  cities  had  become  rich  and 
powerful  and  great  industrial  centers,  she  was  flooded  with 
immigrants  and  slaves.  In  the  days  of  Philip  of  Macedon, 
when  Greece  had  passed  the  crest  of  her  glory,  and  was  on 
the  edge  of  dissolution,  the  population  of  Athens  in  round 
numbers  consisted  of  twenty  thousand  Athenians,  ten 
thousand  aliens  and  four  hundred  thousand  slaves. 

It  might  be  mentioned  in  passing  that  the  last  census 
showed  that  the  population  of  Boston,  sometimes  known  as 
the  Athens  of  America,  consisted  of  some  three  hundred 
thousand  native-born  Americans  and  some  four  hundred 
thousand  aliens. 

These  aliens  and  slaves  of  Ancient  Athens  spoke  the 
Greek  tongue  and  they  wore  the  Greek  dress,  but  they  were 
not  Greeks.  Citizenship  was  conferred  on  them,  so  that  they 
might  fight  the  battles  of  Greece.  The  result  was  inevitable. 
Any  promiscuous  crossing  of  breeds  invariably  produces 
mongrels,  whether  the  crossing  occurs  in  dogs  or  in  humans, 
and  whether  it  takes  place  in  the  Valley  of  the  Nile  or  on  the 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          231 

Attic  plain  or  in  the  shadow  of  Rome's  seven  hills  or  along 
the  stern  and  rock-bound  shores  of  New  England.  People 
whose  trust  in  catch-words  is  greater  than  their  common 
sense  are  fatuous  enough  to  believe  that  by  pouring  all  the 
races  of  Europe  in  a  human  melting-pot,  one  can  keep  on 
producing  the  same  breed  of  men  that  founded  America, 
laid  down  its  scheme  of  government,  wrenched  its  farms  and 
its  cities  from  the  wilderness,  and  produced  its  scientists, 
statesmen,  artists,  pioneers,  authors  and  explorers.  It  is  no 
more  possible  to  do  this  than  it  is  to  turn  a  yapping,  snarling 
pile  of  Pekinese,  Chows,  pugs,  Boston  terriers,  poodles, 
beagles,  collies,  coach-dogs,  wolf-hounds  and  mongrels  into 
a  kennel  and  have  them  produce  litters  of  thoroughbred 
setters.  Both  are  biological  impossibilities;  and  all  the 
catch-words  in  the  world  dealing  with  melting-pots  and  with 
all  men  being  born  free  and  equal  only  serve  to  make  Old 
Man  Biology  burst  into  raucous  cackles  of  laughter  and 
proceed  stubbornly  on  his  time-honored  routine.  In  Mexico, 
Central  America,  South  America  and  the  Balkan  States  the 
world  has  excellent  samples  of  people  who  have  so  deterior- 
ated through  cross-breeding  that  they  are  wholly  incapable 
of  self-government  as  Americans  have  known  it  in  past 
years — but  as  they  won't  know  it  very  much  longer  if  immi- 
gration should  continue  in  the  future  to  anywhere  near  the 
same  degree  that  the  criminal  negligence  of  our  legislators 
has  permitted  it  in  the  past.  The  pages  of  history  are 
littered  with  the  stories  of  great  civilizations  that  have 
perished  because  of  unrestricted  immigration  and  the  mon- 
grelization  that  resulted.  As  a  result  of  unrestricted  immi- 
gration the  Greek  race,  the  Greek  genius  and  the  Greek 
nation  fell  to  pieces.  In  the  past  two  thousand  years 
Greece  has  produced  no  literature,  no  architecture,  no 


232  [WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

philosophy,  no  art,  no  science,  and  no  ability  to  govern 
itself  or  its  subject  peoples  with  any  degree  of  success.  The 
great  cities  of  Greece  crumbled  to  dirty  collections  of 
peasant  huts.  Even  Athens  itself,  as  recently  as  1834,  was  a 
poverty-stricken  village  which  had  to  be  re-discovered  by 
Western  civilization.  The  modern  Greeks  like  to  have 
visitors  believe  that  they  are  descended  straight  from  the 
true  Greeks  of  the  days  of  Pericles;  but  if  they  are,  then 
every  Greek  bootblack  in  New  England  is  descended 
straight  from  Plymouth  Colony.  The  Greeks  of  to-day— 
except  on  some  of  the  Greek  islands,  which  have  been  com- 
paratively free  from  invasion  and  immigration — are 
descended  from  Asiatic  and  African  slaves,  Italians,  old 
Bulgarians,  Slavs,  Gepidse,  Huns,  Herulians,  Avars, 
Egyptians,  Jews,  Illyrians,  Arabs,  Spaniards,  Walloons, 
Franks,  Albanians,  and  several  other  races.  History  has 
an  unfortunate  but  incurable  habit  of  repeating  itself, — 
and  a  word  to  the  wise  ought  to  be  better  than  a  jab  with  an 
eight-inch  hatpin. 

Modern  Athens  is  a  startlingly  modern  city,  laid  out  by 
a  German  engineer.  The  Greeks  are  great  hands  for  being 
helped.  The  British  showed  them  how  to  run  their  navy; 
the  French  instructed  them  in  forming  their  army;  British 
leaders  and  Albanian  fighters  finally  won  for  them  from 
the  Turks  the  horrible  exhibition  of  barbarism  and  inca- 
pacity which  is  dignified  by  the  name  of  the  Greek  War 
of  Independence — a  war  in  which  the  Greeks  displayed,  as 
they  have  so  frequently  done  in  recent  years,  at  least  as 
great  a  capacity  for  barbarity  as  the  Turks. 

The  yellowed  marble  columns  on  the  crest  of  the  Acrop- 
olis— most  beautiful  and  imposing  of  all  the  monuments 
of  antiquity — look  down  on  asphalt  streets,  glaring  white 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  233 

apartment-houses  and  office  buildings  and  innumerable 
cafes  at  whose  sidewalk  tables  the  Greeks  sit  from  early 
morning  until  late  at  night,  wreathed  in  the  dust-clouds  that 
seem  to  whirl  eternally  through  the  streets  of  Athens,  and 
feverishly  pouring  politics  into  one  another's  ears  and  coffee 
into  themselves.  Everybody  in  Greece,  even  in  little  country 
villages  which  have  no  newspapers  of  their  own  and  don't 
even  get  the  Athenian  political  pamphlets  which  masquer- 
ade under  the  name  of  newspapers,  lives  in  an  atmosphere  of 
politics  and  intrigue.  Where  many  of  them  acquire  their 
political  information  is  a  mystery  to  newcomers  to  the 
country,  who  are  inclined  to  think  that  they  pick  up  some 
sort  of  political  germ  from  their  coffee.  But  they  all  get 
it,  even  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant ;  and  they  can  brawl 
for  hours  over  political  matters,  and  drag  out  arguments 
that  would  do  credit  to  an  extreme  Socialist  for  resource- 
fulness and  speciousness.  The  spirit  of  faction  among  the 
Greeks  is  incurable.  Back  in  the  War  of  Independence, 
nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  every  temporary  cessation  of 
fighting  was  the  signal  for  internecine  conflicts  between 
rival  Greek  factions  because  of  the  rivalry  of  leaders  who 
thought  more  of  their  personal  power  and  profit  than  of 
the  cause  of  Greece.  There  aren't  so  many  factions  to-day; 
but  they're  equally  willing  to  wreck  Greece  in  order  to  gain 
their  own  ends. 

Sketchily,  the  departure  of  King  Constantine  from 
Greece  and  his  return  occurred  in  the  following  manner: 

Constantine,  born  in  1868,  is  the  son  of  King  George  I 
of  Greece — who,  before  he  took  the  Greek  throne,  was  a 
Danish  prince — and  of  Queen  Olga,  who  was  a  Russian 
grand  duchess.  Constantine  married  a  sister  of  Kaiser 
Wilhelm,  and  has  always  been  a  passionate  pro-German. 


if 
234  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

He  was  convinced  that  Germany  would  win  the  war,  and 
consequently  refused  to  carry  out  his  treaty  obligations  and 
his  promises  to  the  Allies.  The  war  developed  no  greater 
traitor  to  the  Allied  cause  than  King  Constantine.  He 
assisted  the  Bulgarians ;  he  disregarded  the  treaty  of  alliance 
which  Greece  had  with  Serbia,  and  permitted  the  Serbians 
to  be  attacked  and  nearly  destroyed  without  assisting  them 
in  any  way;  and  he  condoned  the  surrounding  of  a  detach- 
ment of  French  marines  in  the  heart  of  Athens  by  a  much 
larger  detachment  of  Greek  soldiers  and  the  shooting  down 
of  nearly  one  hundred  of  them  in  cold  blood.  He  is  a  trick- 
ster, a  traitor  and  a  liar ;  and  these  words,  strong  as  they  are, 
are  far  milder  than  they  ought  to  be.  Constantine's  prime 
minister  was  Venizelos,  who  had  repeatedly  proved  himself 
a  great  statesman.  When  Constantine,  with  his  Hohen- 
zollern  wife  and  his  German  advisers,  showed  clearly  that  he 
would  oppose  the  Allies  to  the  end,  Venizelos  went  to  the 
Island  of  Crete  and  declared  a  revolution.  He  was  joined 
by  the  inhabitants  of  the  Greek  islands  and  of  the  south  of 
Greece.  He  raised  an  army  of  two  hundred  thousand  men 
and  joined  the  Allies  with  them.  The  Allies  then 
demanded  that  Constantine  abdicate  in  favor  of  his  son 
Alexander — a  charming  young  man  whose  chief  idea  of 
the  kinging  business  consisted  of  saying  "Where  do  I  sign  ?" 
and  then  rushing  off  for  a  motor-ride  with  a  pretty  friend. 
Constantine  finally  did  this — though  after  his  return  he 
declared  proudly  that  he  didn't — and  hastened  away  to 
Switzerland  with  a  large  bevy  of  royal  princes  and 
princesses.  Venizelos  then  came  back  under  King  Alex- 
ander, reorganized  the  government,  threw  out  the  most 
rabid  pro-Germans,  and  proceeded  to  lay  out  plans  to  make 
Greece  into  a  bigger,  better  and  busier  place.  When  the 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  235 

war  was  over,  he  hastened  to  the  Peace  Conference  and  pre- 
sented his  claims  to  that  august  body.  He  is  a  great  states- 
man, and  he  had  the  confidence  of  the  representatives  of  the 
Great  Powers.  As  a  result,  Greece  got  more  out  of  the  war 
in  proportion  to  work  done  than  any  other  nation  in  it. 
After  an  absence  of  nearly  two  years,  Venizelos  returned  to 
Greece  and  was  welcomed  with  wild  enthusiasm.  In  the 
hearty  Greek  way  there  was  wassail  in  Athens,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  rioting,  knifing  and  gunplay.  The  houses  of  Royal- 
ists were  smashed  up.  Then  the  Venizelists  killed  a  very 
popular  Royalist  deputy,  and  this  started  a  revulsion  of  feel- 
ing against  Venizelos.  This  feeling  was  accentuated  when 
the  Greeks  learned  the  terms  of  the  Treaty  of  Sevres  and  of 
the  hard  bargains  which  the  French,  Italians  and  British  had 
driven  in  return  for  the  concessions  which  they  made  to 
Greece.  The  treaty,  for  example,  provides  that  Greece  shall 
grant  all  commercial  privileges  in  certain  Asia  Minor  zones 
to  those  three  governments:  everybody  else  is  shut  out.  It 
provides  that  Italy  shall  have  a  monopoly  of  the  exploitation 
of  antiquities  in  the  Dodeccanese — islands  which  were  the 
seats  of  ancient  Greek  culture.  Nobody  but  Italians  can 
excavate  there — and  Italy  can't  even  afford  to  excavate  her 
own  antiquities  properly  just  now.  Such  deals  are  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  what  the  purists  like  to  call  dirty  tricks. 
The  blame  for  such  contemptible  arrangements  falls  rather 
on  the  statesmen  who  demanded  them  than  on  Venizelos. 
Greece  lost  nothing  by  the  arrangement;  but  when  the 
Royalists  learned  of  them,  they  emitted  poignant  shrieks  of 
agony  and  cursed  Venizelos  loudly  and  ferociously.  It  made 
good  campaign  material  and  helped  to  undermine  Venizelos. 
General  elections  were  set  for  mid-October. 

But  about  that  time  King  Alexander  died  of  a  monkey- 


236  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

bite  and  left  no  heir.  The  elections  were  postponed  for  a 
week,  and  the  politicians  began  to  boil  and  seethe  and  explode 
on  every  side.  Venizelos  said  that  under  no  conditions 
would  he  countenance  Constantine's  return;  young  Prince 
Paul,  youngest  of  Constantine's  sons,  he  said,  could  have 
the  throne,  but  not  Constantine  or  any  of  his  nit-wit  broth- 
ers. But  Paul,  from  the  rocky  fastnesses  of  a  Swiss  grill- 
room, where  he  was  surrounded  by  his  traitor  father  and 
his  Hohenzollern  mother  and  all  his  egg-headed  pro-German 
uncles  and  other  kin-folk,  refused  Venizelos'  offer  with 
thanks.  Thus  Venizelos  was  left  looking  helplessly  around 
the  horizon  for  a  king. 

The  Italians,  who  have  always  been  pro-Constantine  for 
political  reasons,  though  officially  against  him,  shipped  sev- 
eral million  lire  into  Greece  to  be  used  for  electioneering. 
Some  of  Constantine's  pro-German  cabinet  ministers,  ban- 
ished by  the  Allies,  filtered  back  into  the  country  and  went 
to  work  for  Constantine.  Constantine  has  always  been  per- 
sonally popular  in  Greece  because  of  his  habit  of  mingling 
fraternally  with  the  soldiers  and  because  of  a  few  minor 
successes  in  the  Balkan  Wars,  which  were  magnified  into 
great  victories  by  the  clever  press-agent  work  of  Venizelos. 

As  a  result  of  these  things,  Venizelos  was  defeated  in 
the  general  elections  by  a  small  majority.  That  is  to  say, 
more  Royalist  deputies  than  Venizelist  deputies  were 
elected.  Venizelos,  declaring  that  it  amounted  to  a  personal 
defeat,  left  the  country.  The  Royalists,  by  trick  work  that 
amounted  to  a  revolution,  got  control  of  the  government 
and  sent  hurry-up  messages  to  Constantine  to  return  and 
start  wearing  out  the  throne  once  more.  Constantine 
proudly  and  prudently  replied  that  he  couldn't  unless  he 
were  specifically  demanded  by  the  people. 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          237 

So  another  election  was  held.  The  ballots  contained  two 
voting-spaces:  one  read  "Constantine"  and  one  read  "No." 
Nearly  half  of  the  Venizelists  throughout  Greece  refused  to 
vote  at  this  election ;  yet  in  many  voting  districts  containing 
large  percentages  of  Venizelists,  the  number  of  votes  cast 
ranged  from  one  hundred  and  ten  per  cent,  to  one  hundred 
and  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  registered  voters.  In  other  words, 
every  Royalist  voted  as  often  as  he  pleased,  and  he  pleased 
quite  frequently.  Consequently  the  demand  for  Constan- 
tine's  return  appeared  to  be  overwhelming'.  In  reality  it  was 
nothing  of  the  sort.  Such  is  or  are  politics  in  Greece. 

So  Constantine  came  back  with  his  Hohenzollern  queen 
and  his  attendant  princes  and  princesses  and  pro-German 
advisers.  And  Greece,  who  can't  afford  to  give  enough 
food  or  medical  assistance  to  the  Salonika  colonists  to  keep 
them  from  dying  like  fish  washed  up  on  a  hot  beach,  is 
proudly  throwing  away  the  millions  required  to  keep  one 
king,  two  queens,  seven  princes,  and  twenty  princesses  com- 
fortably installed  in  their  royal  apartments.  He  came  back, 
this  traitor  to  the  Allies,  to  enjoy  the  colossal  gains  which 
accrued  to  Greece  from  the  victory  which  he  did  everything 
in  his  power  to  avert.  And  he  is  enjoying  them  with  right 
good  will.  To  allow  Constantine  to  rule  to-day  in  Greece 
is  almost  as  bad  as  to  allow  William  Hohenzollern  to  occupy 
the  position  of  king  of  France. 

Constantine  not  only  doesn't  deserve  the  recognition  of 
any  decent  government,  but  he  doesn't  get  it— or  he  hadn't 
got  it  in  the  spring  of  1921.  Officially,  Constantine  doesn't 
exist  for  England  or  France  or  America  or  Italy  or  any  other 
Allied  government;  and  in  that  fact  there  lies  some  rich 
and  juicy  musical-comedy  material.  Representatives  of  the 
Allies  aren't  permitted  to  admit  that  Constantine  exists.  If 
they  meet  him  on  the  street,  in  the  midst  of  cheering  crowds, 


238  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

they  must  gaze  abstractedly  at  the  sky  or  look  pensively  at 
their  feet,  or  pretend  to  be  deep  in  contemplation  of  their 
watches;  and  under  no  conditions  must  they  permit  them- 
selves to  admit  his  existence  by  lifting  their  hats,  waving 
or  twiddling  their  fingers,  or  emitting  even  the  mildest  of 
diplomatic  razzes,  as  one  might  say.  Athens  is  full  of 
Allied  diplomats  who  spend  most  of  their  time  while  out-of- 
doors  in  running  up  alley-ways  and  hiding  behind  the  cor- 
ners of  buildings  and  jumping  over  fences  in  order  to  escape 
meeting  the  king  face  to  face  and  creating  an  embarrassing 
situation  by  refusing  to  see  him.  Constantine,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  constantly  resorting  to  petty  tricks  which  will 
enable  him  to  say  that  he  has  been  recognized  by  the  Allied 
representatives.  American  destroyers,  for  example,  have 
been  ordered  to  stay  away  from  Piraeus  for  fear  that  some 
of  the  officers  might  wander  up  to  Athens  and  come  face 
to  face  with  the  king  and  be  invited  to  come  around  to  the 
palace  to  dinner  before  they  knew  what  was  happening 
to  them.  Constantine  would  be  quite  capable  of  it. 

There's  the  case  of  Admiral  O'Kelly.  O'Kelly,  a  Brit- 
ish naval  officer,  is  at  the  head  of  the  naval  mission  that's 
running  the  Greek  navy.  He  is  also  an  officer  in  the  Greek 
navy,  wears  the  Greek  uniform,  and  receives  a  generous 
salary  from  the  Greek  government.  Soon  after  Constan- 
tine's  return,  he  sent  out  word  that  he  wished  to  see  O'Kelly, 
so  O'Kelly,  not  wishing  to  lose  his  monthly  pay-check,  went 
up  to  the  Palace  and  called  on  him.  At  the  end  of  the  inter- 
view, Constantine  walked  to  the  door  with  him;  and  as  he 
shook  hands  with  him  he  pressed  something  into  the  ad- 
miral's hand.  "Here's  something  I  want  you  to  have,"  said 
the  king.  When  O'Kelly  got  outside,  he  looked  at  it.  It  was 
the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of  the  Redeemer,  which  is 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          239 

Constantine's  private  and  pet  order.  But  if  O'Kelly  had  been 
permitted  to  accept  it  by  the  British,  it  would  have  been  an 
admission  that  Constantine  existed.  So  O'Kelly  had  to  go 
back  next  day,  hand  back  the  Grand  Cross,  and  eat,  as  the 
saying  goes,  crow. 

One  of  the  few  social  centers  in  Athens  is  the  Tennis 
Club.  A  short  time  ago  a  number  of  improvements  were 
made  on  the  grounds;  and  when  they  were  completed,  the 
club  announced  that  it  was  holding  open  house.  The 
foreign  colonies  of  the  city  turned  out  in  force,  and  the  entire 
diplomatic  set  was  posing  gracefully  on  the  front  lawn  with 
its  white  spats,  its  refined  accents,  its  low  musical  laughter 
and  everything,  when  suddenly  the  royal  family  appeared 
unannounced  on  the  scene.  For  a  moment  the  assemblage, 
as  the  early  literary  realists  used  to  remark,  was  rooted  to 
the  ground  with  horror.  Then  they  pulled  themselves  up 
by  the  roots,  so  to  speak,  and  there  was  a  general  flight  of 
the  different  diplomatic  corps  over  fences,  around  corners 
and  behind  bushes. 

The  only  governments  that  recognize  Constantine  are 
Spain,  Holland,  and  Rumania.  Even  Rumania  held  off  as 
long  as  possible,  and  only  weakened  when  Constantine's 
oldest  son  married  Elizabeth  of  Rumania,  at  the  same  time 
the  Prince  Carol  of  Rumania  married  Princess  Helene  of 
Greece.  Consequently  at  all  functions  where  the  diplomatic 
corps  is  announced,  the  waiting  courtiers  see  only  three 
ancient  and  pitiful  specimens  staggering  into  sight. 

A  few  weeks  after  Constantine's  return,  the  Dutch  min- 
ister died.  He  was  the  dean  of  the  diplomatic  corps.  On 
the  day  before  the  funeral  the  marshal  of  the  court  visited 
his  successor  and  stated  that  the  king  would  attend  it.  His 
successor  begged  the  marshal  not  to  permit  such  a  thing, 


240  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

since  it  was  sure  to  create  a  scene.  "The  king,"  replied  the 
marshal  imperturbably,  "is  in  his  own  country.  He  will 
abstain  only  at  the  request  of  the  ministers."  But  since 
that  would  have  been  a  form  of  recognition,  the  ministers 
refused  to  make  such  a  request.  The  funeral  took  place: 
the  diplomatic  representatives  of  the  Allied  powers  took 
their  seats  in  a  body  at  the  front  of  the  church.  Then 
there  was  a  blare  of  trumpets  and  the  king  entered,  bowing 
graciously  to  left  and  right.  Not  an  Allied  diplomat  moved 
a  muscle  as  he  passed.  He  was  led  to  a  seat  directly  in 
front  of  the  diplomats  and  facing  them.  Throughout  the 
service  Constantine  glared  balefully  at  the  ministers;  and 
the  ministers  stared  over  his  head  or  past  him  or  through 
him  without  a  trace  of  recognition. 

This  situation  was  not  brought  about  solely  because 
Constantine  was  a  pro-German  during  the  war  and  did 
everything  in  his  power  to  further  the  German  cause. 
Some  of  it  was  due  to  the  pride,  pig-headedness  and 
avarice  which  prevented  Constantine  from  admitting  to  the 
Allies  that  he  ever  abdicated  or  that  his  son  Alexander  ever 
actually  ruled  in  Greece.  Constantine  and  the  Royalist 
politicians  were  even  anxious  to  declare  illegitimate  the 
Venizelist  government  of  young  King  Alexander,  and  to 
disavow  all  contracts  made  by  that  government;  but  they 
didn't  quite  dare  to  go  through  with  it.  Constantine  claimed 
flatly  that  he  didn't  abdicate  at  all,  and  maintained  passion- 
ately that  his  son  Alexander  was  merely  pinch-hitting  for 
him  while  he  was  on  a  pleasure  trip  to  Switzerland.  This 
claim,  if  admitted  by  the  Greeks,  entitled  him  to  collect  back 
pay  for  the  years  that  he  spent  in  Lucerne ;  and  he  so  col- 
lected. Constantine's  pride  is  tremendous,  and  he  hated 
to  admit  that  the  Allies  had  any  cause  to  force  him  out,  or 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  241 

had  the  power  to  do  so.  Therefore  he  failed  to  announce 
formally  to  the  Allies  that  he  had  come  back  as  successor  to 
his  son,  King  Alexander;  and  the  Allies,  knowing  that  their 
contracts  and  agreements  with  Alexander's  government 
were  worthless  until  he  did  so,  regarded  him  with  the  same 
confidence  and  esteem  that  they  might  have  had  for  a  case 
of  bubonic  plague. 

During  the  first  few  months  of  the  king's  return,  his 
reluctance  to  admit  that  he  had  ever  abdicated  was  accen- 
tuated by  the  fact  that  Madame  Manou,  the  morganatic 
wife  of  young  King  Alexander,  was  about  to  have  a  baby. 
If  Constantine  admitted  that  Alexander  had  actually  been 
king,  and  the  baby  turned  out  to  be  a  boy,  then  life  auto- 
matically became  more  complex  for  Constantine.  Such  an 
occurrence  might  easily  start  a  new  succession  to  the  Greek 
throne — an  eventuality  which  held  no  charm  for  Constan- 
tine. The  baby,  born  early  in  1921,  proved  to  be  a  girl. 
The  Venizelists,  of  course,  claimed  that  a  boy  had  actually 
been  born  and  a  girl  substituted  for  it.  It  is  a  point  around 
which  many  legends  will  inevitably  spring  up  in  the  future ; 
and  it  provides  a  magnificent  jumping-off-place  for  future 
intriguers. 

The  Greeks  take  a  rather  peculiar  attitude  on  the  question 
of  the  non-recognition  of  Constantine  by  the  other  nations. 
Some  of  them — even  men  like  cabinet  ministers  and  high 
officials — say:  "It  is  an  outrage  that  Constantine  is  not 
recognized ;  and  so  long  as  diplomats  refuse  to  recognize  and 
honor  Constantine,  we  shall  refuse  to  recognize  or  to  honor 
them."  They  take  it  as  a  personal  affront.  Others,  among 
whom  is  a  former  prime  minister  of  Greece,  adopt  a  defiant 
tone.  "What  do  we  care  whether  the  Allies  do  or  do  not 
recognize  the  present  government  of  Greece,"  he  exclaimed. 


242  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

"Greece  can  take  care  of  herself!  She  needs  neither  the 
recognition  nor  the  help  of  any  one!"  Here  again  stands 
revealed  the  masterful  and  overwhelming  boobishness  of  the 
Greek  statesman,  so  called.  Still  others  are  anxious  that 
the  king  take  steps  to  be  recognized  so  that  Greece  can  get 
from  America  the  balance  of  the  thirty-three  million  dollar 
loan  which  Greece  negotiated  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war. 
Since  the  war  for  which  it  was  intended  was  the  Great  War, 
and  not  the  paralytic,  knock-kneed,  ill-begotten  war  in  Asia 
Minor,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  never  get  it.  Almost  all 
of  the  Royalists  talk  loudly  and  continuously  about  the  loan, 
and  whether  Greece  will  get  it,  and  how  she  can  improve 
her  chances  of  getting  it;  but  not  one  of  them  ever  thinks 
of  discussing  Constantine's  treachery  to  the  Allies  and  the 
evil  days  that  he  has  brought  and  is  bringing  on  his  own 
nation. 

The  moves  for  which  the  king  and  his  government  were 
responsible  during  the  first  half  year  of  his  return  were  not 
such  as  to  breed  an  over-supply  of  confidence  in  anybody 
who  had  dealings  with  King  Alexander's  Venizelist  gov- 
ernment; for  a  majority  of  them  were  moves  to  destroy 
everything  for  which  Venizelos  was  responsible.  As  a 
prime  minister,  the  king  took  a  foxy,  narrow-minded  and 
unscrupulous  gentleman  named  Gounaris,  who  was  prime 
minister  before  the  king  was  forced  out,  and  was  even 
imprisoned  on  the  Island  of  Corsica  by  the  French  for  his 
dangerous  and  excessive  pro-Germanism.  He  gave  his  word 
of  honor  not  to  try  to  escape,  and  was  consequently  allowed 
a  certain  amount  of  freedom.  He  thereupon  broke  his  parole 
immediately  and  escaped — a  fact  which  faintly  serves  to 
reveal  his  delightful  character.  As  a  silent  adviser,  the  king 
had  a  German  named  Doctor  Streit,  who  ran  in  and  out  of 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          243 

the  palace  by  the  back  door,  and  advised  the  king  on  matters 
of  moment.  Streit  went  into  exile  with  the  king,  and 
returned  with  him.  As  chief  of  staff  of  the  army  the  king 
reinstated  a  General  Dousmanis,  who  used  every  unscrupu- 
lous and  underhanded  means  in  his  power  to  smash  Veni- 
zelos  and  prevent  him  from  taking  any  part  of  Greece  into 
the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies.  It  was  he  who  was 
responsible  for  the  killing  of  the  French  troops  in  Athens 
and  for  much  of  the  sentiment  against  the  Allies  which 
existed  in  Greece.  All  of  them  together  comprise  the 
gang  that  sold  Greece  out  to  Germany. 

During  the  first  quarter  of  1921  the  Greeks  started  a 
flourishing  war  in  Asia  Minor  against  the  so-called  Turkish 
Nationalist  forces,  which  were  commanded  by  a  first-class 
soldier  named  Mustapha  Kemal  Pasha.  The  exact  causes 
of  this  war  are  shrouded  in  mystery.  Some  Greeks  claimed 
that  they  were  fighting  the  battles  of  England  and  France : 
but  England  and  France  did  not  always  agree  with  the 
Greeks  on  this  statement.  Other  Greeks  stated  that  they 
wished  to  crush  all  future  organized  resistance  to  the  Greek 
occupation  of  Asia  Minor  by  Kemalist  troops.  Their 
chances  of  doing  this  were  and,  from  the  nature  of  the 
country,  always  must  be  about  as  good  as  would  be  the 
chances  of  one  division  of  badly  equipped  American  troops 
to  crush  effectively  and  finally  all  armed  resistance  in 
Mexico.  Several  other  claims  were  equally  thin.  The 
Greek  soldiers  who  went  to  Asia  Minor — and  most  of  them 
went  with  reluctant  feet — were  told  by  their  officers,  and 
believed  implicitly,  that  they  were  going  for  the  purpose  of 
capturing  Constantinople  and  making  it  into  a  Greek  city. 
Such  an  eventuality  would  be  a  very  distressing  thing  for 
the  future  of  Constantinople  and  the  Near  East;  for  the 


244  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Greeks  will  never  win  any  high  awards  or  any  shiny  gold 
medals  for  their  ability  to  control,  govern  or  rule  any  dis- 
trict or  territory  in  which  there  are  any  subject  races. 

Like  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  the  wars  which  are  con- 
stantly erupting  in  the  new  Europe,  this  war  was  nothing 
but  a  land-grabbing  expedition.  It  was  unnecessary ;  it  was 
wholly  useless;  and  because  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
Greeks  conducted  it,  it  was  a  criminal  operation  strikingly 
similar  to  murder  in  the  first  degree. 

I  have  no  particular  love  for  the  Turk,  though  he  has  a 
great  many  likable  qualities  that  some  of  his  neighbors  lack. 
The  government  of  Mustapha  Kemal  Pasha  is  unquestion- 
ably regarded  by  all  Turks  as  the  real  Turkish  government ; 
yet  the  Kemalist  government  repudiated  the  obligations 
which  Turkey  assumed  at  the  time  of  the  armistice.  It 
tied  up  with  the  Bolsheviks;  it  generally  misbehaved  itself; 
and  it  deserved  no  sympathy  in  its  fight  against  the  Greeks. 
Neither,  however,  did  the  Greek  government  deserve  any 
sympathy  in  its  fight  against  the  Turks.  The  Greek  gov- 
ernment brought  Constantine  back  to  Greece ;  and  by  bring- 
ing him  back,  it  flouted  the  Allies  and  forced  Greece  to  fight 
for  what  she  might  otherwise  have  had  without  fighting. 
In  Asia  Minor  the  Turks  can  keep  up  a  guerrilla  warfare 
against  invading  Greeks  for  years  on  end,  hiding  behind 
rocks  on  the  hill-slopes  and  picking  away  at  the  Greek  lines 
in  the  Mexican  fashion.  The  Anatolian  mountains  are  rough 
and  barren;  and  to  maintain  an  effective  force  in  this 
unpromising  region,  the  Greeks  must  operate  long  lines  of 
communication — a  feat  which  their  lack  of  organizing  ability 
will  always  make  extremely  difficult  under  the  best  of  con- 
ditions. No  matter  what  successes  the  Greeks  may  have 
against  the  Turks  in  Asia  Minor,  the  mere  task  of  garrison- 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK          245 

ing  the  area  behind  their  lines  and  keeping  a  large  army 
constantly  in  shape  to  repel  the  attacks  of  Turkish  regulars 
and  guerrillas  must  of  necessity  be  a  burden  which  will  come 
close  to  driving  Greece  into  bankruptcy.  If  it  does  so,  the 
blame  will  rest  entirely  on  the  stupendous  selfishness,  vanity 
and  short-sightedness  of  Constantine  and  the  politicians  who 
support  him.  If  the  Greeks  were  to  be  defeated  in  Asia 
Minor,  the  Greeks  would  unquestionably  turn  against  Con- 
stantine, eject  him  once  more  from  the  country,  and  set  up 
a  new  dynasty  to  carry  on  the  work  of  wasting  the  resources 
of  the  land  which  brought  forth  the  Greek  Republic — twen- 
ty-five hundred  years  ago. 

At  any  rate,  the  Greek  army  that  went  to  Asia  Minor 
was  commanded  by  Venizelist  officers,  since  the  army  raised 
by  Venizelos  to  enter  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies  was 
the  only  Greek  army  that  had  had  any  experience  in  modern 
warfare.  At  the  end  of  March,  1921,  the  Greeks  started 
an  offensive  against  the  Turks.  Twenty-four  hours  before 
the  offensive  took  place,  all  high  Venizelist  officers  were 
removed  from  their  positions  and  replaced  by  Royalist  offi- 
cers who  had  no  experience  in  modern  warfare  aside  from 
that  which  they  had  gained  by  sitting  heavily  in  armchairs 
and  talking  politics.  As  a  result,  the  Turks  administered  a 
terrible  trouncing  to  the  Greeks  and  the  wounded  began  to 
pour  back  to  Athens.  The  Greek  transport  system  at  the 
front  broke  down;  and  the  ignorance  of  the  officers  in  the 
field  was  so  great  that  they  were  unable  to  use  much  of  their 
equipment.  Their  field  radio,  for  example,  they  were  inca- 
pable of  setting  up. 

The  Royalists  did  their  utmost  to  prevent  any  news  of 
the  defeat  and  of  the  change  in  officers  from  reaching  the 
people.  The  newspaper  Patrist  edited  by  a  young  man 


246  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

named  Lambrachis,  was  the  only  one  that  told  the  story. 
Lambrachis  was  immediately  arrested  and  thrown  into  jail. 
The  incentive  to  truth-telling  is  not  high  in  Greece. 

News  of  the  Asia  Minor  shambles  got  abroad  in  the  land 
in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  government  to  prevent  it.  A 
regiment  of  new  troops  marched  past  the  hotel  in  which  I 
was  staying  on  its  way  to  Piraeus  to  embark  for  Asia  Minor. 
Some  one  on  the  hotel  porch  shouted  down  to  them  "Where 
are  you  going?"  and  several  voices  from  the  ranks  replied 
"To  the  abattoir!"  The  popularity  of  Constantine,  too, 
began  to  be  somewhat  dented  and  shopworn  with  the 
soldiers.  The  war  was  a  very  unpopular  war  anyway:  the 
draft,  in  spite  of  enthusiastic  reports  of  its  success  sent  out 
by  the  government  press  agency,  was  evaded  on  every  side; 
Constantine,  instead  of  disbanding  the  army  and  sending  it 
back  to  its  homes,  as  those  who  campaigned  for  him  had 
promised  he  would  do  on  his  return,  had  started  a  new  war 
to  round  out  the  eight  years  of  war  which  Greece  had  already 
enjoyed  in  the  First,  Second  and  Third  Balkan  Wars  and 
the  Great  War — a  new  war  which  the  diplomacy  and  states- 
manship of  Venizelos  would  unquestionably  never  have  per- 
mitted. Troops  sailing  from  the  south  of  Greece  to  Asia 
Minor  shouted  to  bystanders — referring  to  Constantine: 
"We  wanted  him,  and  we  got  him!"  Then  they  would 
smack  their  faces  with  their  open  hands,  which  is  a  Grecian 
gesture  meaning  that  they  had  got  him  in  the  neck,  as  the 
saying  goes. 

Nothing  in  Greece  was  free  from  the  rotten  politics  of 
Constantine  and  his  gang.  The  American  Red  Cross,  for 
example,  established  an  extensive  baby-welfare  organization 
in  Greece.  The  Greek  Patriotic  League  assumed  the 
responsibility  for  it,  and  the  Red  Cross  appointed  the  women 


247 

who  should  be  in  charge.  Some  of  these  women  were 
Royalists  and  some  were  Venizelists;  and  the  Red  Cross 
told  the  Greek  government  plainly  and  bluntly  that  politics 
were  to  be  kept  out  of  it.  When  Constantine  came  back, 
Queen  Sophie  immediately  began  to  mix  in  the  affairs  of 
the  Patriotic  League.  She  demanded  the  resignation  of  all 
Venizelists.  The  Red  Cross  served  notice  on  the  Greek 
government  that  if  there  were  further  changes  or  forced 
resignation  in  welfare  organizations,  the  Red  Cross  would 
withdraw  from  Greece.  Sophie  will  find  a  way  to  beat  the 
Red  Cross;  because  Sophie  is  a  Hohenzollern  and  a  poli- 
tician ;  while  the  Red  Cross,  thank  God,  is  neither. 

This  same  political  acrimony,  coupled  with  the  lack  of 
organizing  ability  for  which  the  Greeks  are  noted,  had  pre- 
vented the  formation  of  nursing  or  welfare  organizations  to 
look  after  the  wounded  who  were  pouring  in  daily  from  the 
Asia  Minor  front.  Athens  is  the  best  equipped  city  in  all 
Greece ;  but  in  the  best  and  biggest  hospital  in  Athens,  while 
I  was  there,  four  hundred  and  thirty  wounded  soldiers  were 
being  attended — and  wretchedly  attended — by  four  nurses 
and  eight  doctors.  All  of  the  cabarets  and  the  danscmts 
were  packed  to  the  doors  every  afternoon  and  evening. 

Every  school-teacher  in  Greece  who  was  known  to  be  a 
Venizelos  sympathizer  was  removed  from  her  job  and 
shifted  to  a  distant  section  of  the  country.  Many  of  the 
teachers  suffered  a  series  of  shifts,  so  that  to  all  extents  and 
purposes  they  were  entirely  thrown  out  of  employment  The 
number  of  teachers  that  were  thus  shifted  ran  into  the  thou- 
sands; and  as  a  result  of  this  charming  manifestation  of 
patriotism  and  political  probity,  the  entire  school  system  of 
the  nation  was  thrown  into  disorganization  for  at  least  one 
year,  while  more  than  half  of  the  schools  had  to  be  closed. 


248  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

As  soon  as  Constantine  came  back,  his  gang  effected 
the  dismissal  of  fifty-two  professors  from  the  University  of 
Athens  on  the  ground  that  they  were  Venizelists — which 
they  unquestionably  were.  Among  these  fifty-two  were 
many  of  the  most  distinguished  teachers  in  the  university — 
one,  for  example,  being  Coryllos,  a  professor  of  surgery  and 
a  cancer  specialist  who  is  a  friend  of  such  men  as  the  Mayos 
and  Alexis  Carrel.  Nobody  was  too  high  and  nobody  was 
too  low  for  the  Royalists  to  wreck  their  political  hatred  on. 
One  of  the  cases  that  came  to  my  attention  was  that  of  a 
widow  with  four  children  who  held  a  position  as  door-tender 
in  a  public  school.  Her  husband  had  been  killed  in  action  in 
the  Balkan  Wars.  She  was  fired  from  her  job  after  Con- 
stantine's  return,  because  her  sympathies  were  known  to  be 
with  Venizelos. 

The  Venizelist  politicians  were  pretty  bad,  but  they 
were  angels  compared  with  the  Royalist  politicians,  who 
without  exception  were  either  incompetent,  dishonest,  or 
worthless.  Venizelos  himself  is  a  man  with  ideals,  with 
patriotism,  and  with  that  very  rare  virtue,  common  sense. 
In  many  of  his  leaders  he  inspired  the  same  sentiments  that 
he  himself  possessed.  The  Venizelist  party  was  largely 
composed  of  people  who  believed  in  siding  with  the  Allies 
because  that  was  the  side  of  decency,  justice  and  honor; 
whereas  the  Royalists  believed  in  sticking  with  Germany 
because  they  thought  Germany  had  the  biggest  guns  and 
the  largest  money-chest.  The  Venizelists  were  not  only  in 
the  position  of  revolutionists  against  their  ruler's  policies, 
but  they  were  also  fighting  the  greatest  war  in  history 
against  the  most  terrible  foe  in  history.  The  Royalists  were 
mostly  pro-Germans;  and  the  Venizelists  were  fighting 
Germany  with  the  Allies.  Consequently  the  Venizelists  took 


Copyright   rndtrtcood  if   Tndtnrood 
Venizelos,  former  premier  and  virtual  dictator  of  Greece. 


Copyright  Underwood  &  Underwood 
King  Constantine  of  Greece  before  he  left  Lucerne  for  Athens. 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  249 

steps  to  silence  the  worst  and  the  loudest  pro-Germans,  just 
as  we  did  in  America.  They  fired  five  professors  from  the 
university  for  being  dangerous  pro-Germans,  and  for  giving 
aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemy.  The  Royalists,  on  their 
return  to  power,  retaliated  by  firing  fifty-two  professors 
for  being  Venizelists.  So  works  the  Greek  mind. 

During  the  days  when  Venizelos  was  in  power  as  prime 
minister  to  young  King  Alexander,  pictures  of  King  Con- 
stantine  could  be  found  nowhere  in  the  country,  while 
pictures  of  Venizelos  were  displayed  everywhere.  After 
Constantine's  return,  almost  every  window  held  a  gaudily- 
colored  picture  of  Constantine  in  a  plumed  helmet  and  a  very 
Kaiserish  mustache.  Shops  which  neglected  to  display  pic- 
tures of  him  were  usually  peremptorily  ordered  to  do  so  by 
the  police.  Anybody  who  had  displayed  a  picture  of  Veni- 
zelos would  have  been  arrested.  I  had  to  go  to  more 
trouble  to  get  a  photograph  of  Venizelos  than  I  would 
have  to  undergo  in  buying  a  drink  of  Scotch  whisky  in 
Kansas. 

And  speaking  of  pictures,  the  walls  of  buildings  and  bill- 
boards in  Athens,  while  I  was  there,  were  covered  with 
colored  reproductions  of  the  American  flag  about  two  feet 
long  and  a  foot  wide,  with  the  words  BON-AMI  splashed 
across  them  in  clear  black  letters.  The  American  flag  is  put 
to  many  strange  uses  in  foreign  lands. 

No  mention  of  Constantine's  return  would  be  complete 
without  some  mention  of  the  Princess  Anastasia,  who  used 
to  be  Mrs.  Leeds  before  she  married  Constantine's  brother, 
Prince  Christopher,  and  of  Princess  Anastasia's  eighteen- 
year-old  son,  William  Leeds,  who  is  somewhat  jestingly 
spoken  of  in  Athens  as  the  Duke  of  Piraeus  or  Lord  Leeds. 
Young  Mr.  Leeds  arrived  in  Athens  by  airplane  with  his 


250  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Chinese  valet,  and  promptly  became  engaged  to  the  Grand 
Duchess  Xenia.  The  Leeds  millions,  made  in  America,  are 
so  tied  up  by  the  will  of  the  late  tin-plate  king  that  Princess 
Anastasia  and  young  Mr.  Leeds  can  touch  only  the  interest 
on  them.  The  Leeds  jewels,  however,  are  not  tied  up  by 
the  will ;  and  since  their  value  is  in  excess  of  ten  million  dol- 
lars, the  hard-up  Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucks- 
burg  family  of  Denmark,  Switzerland  and  Greece  will  prob- 
ably never  starve  to  death  as  long  as  there  is  a  ready  market 
for  diamond  stomach  chevrons  and  other  service-decorations 
for  successful  profiteers.  The  Greek  royal  family  denied 
indignantly  that  Princess  Anastasia  provided  the  slush  fund 
which  financed  Constantine's  return;  but  it  is  an  estab- 
lished fact  that  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  of  Leeds 
money  oiled  the  route  along  which  the  return  was  made. 
The  extreme  reluctance  of  Constantine's  family  to  allow 
young  Mr.  Leeds  out  of  their  sight  until  his  marriage  was 
safely  consummated  and  the  Leeds  money  was  securely 
attached  to  needy  royalty  was,  to  put  it  conservatively,  very 
repugnant  to  all  Americans  in  Athens.  The  work  of  royalty 
can  be  very  coarse ;  and  in  this  particular  case'  it  was  coarse 
enough  to  make  a  Chicago  safe-blower  blush  for  his  pro- 
fession and  think  seriously  of  taking  up  a  more  refined  pur- 
suit, like  murder.  The  Leeds  money  is  going  to  be  badly 
needed  by  Constantine's  family  if  it  continues  to  permit  the 
bone-headed  political  atrocities  that  have  marked  its  every 
move  since  its  return;  and  what  the  family  needs,  it  will 
work  hard  to  get.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  poetic  jus- 
tice in  the  thought  of  a  fortune  being  made  by  an  American 
tin-plate  king  and  being  wrecked  by  a  Greek  tin-horn  king 

if  you  know  what  I  mean. 

The  Greek  royal  family,  as  far  as  looks  go,  fulfils  all  the 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  251 

requirements  of  people  who  like  to  look  at  kings  and  their 
pomps.  Constantine  is  tall  and  magnificent-looking.  His 
pants  buckle  under  his  boots,  and  on  his  broad  chest  he 
wears  seventeen  pounds  of  jeweled  decorations,  gold  braid 
and  miscellaneous  hardware.  Queen  Sophie  has  a  haughty 
and  regal  air,  as  though  her  nostrils  were  constantly  assailed 
by  an  offensive  odor.  The  princesses  are  pretty  and  stylish : 
— especially  when  they  pass  the  observer  at  the  rate  of 
thirty-five  miles  an  hour  in  one  of  the  royal  automobiles. 
The  Greeks  love  to  hang  around  on  street-corners  and  wait 
for  His  Majesty  to  pass.  Crowds  of  them  wait  two  and 
three  hours  to  see  him  go  by;  and  as  he  passes,  saluting 
sloppily  and  condescendingly,  a  feeble  cheer  goes  up  from 
the  crowd.  It  must  be  a  great  comfort  to  have  a  king  who 
throws  away  the  taxpayers'  money  and  brings  his  country 
into  disrepute  before  the  eyes  of  the  world.  The  Greeks 
take  comfort  in  strange  things,  anyway.  Full-grown  he- 
men  walk  briskly  around  Athens  dangling  short  strings  of 
amber  or  bone  or  wooden  beads  in  their  hands.  These  are 
known  as  conversation  beads.  Silk-hatted  and  frock-coated 
politicians,  deep  in  conversation  on  a  street  corner,  fiddle 
nervously  with  strings  of  beads  as  they  talk.  Taxi-drivers, 
when  not  engaged  in  running  their  machines,  sprawl  in 
their  seats  and  finger  strings  of  beads.  I  attended  a  session 
of  the  Greek  Chamber  of  Deputies  one  afternoon.  In  the 
front  row  sat  the  distinguished,  so  to  speak,  members  of  the 
Cabinet.  Most  of  them  were  running  strings  of  beads 
through  their  fingers,  while  those  who  had  left  their  beads 
in  their  other  clothes  were  scooping  sunflower  seeds  out  of 
paper  bags,  cracking  them  and  throwing  the  shells  on  the 
floor.  One  Greek  told  me  that  strings  of  beads,  in  Greece, 
took  the  place  of  walking-sticks  in  America.  It  may  be  so ; 


252  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

but  I'd  hate  to  try  to  hold  off  a  pickpocket  by  swinging  a 
string  of  beads  on  him. 

After  I  had  been  in  Greece  for  a  short  time,  I  had 
accumulated  a  number  of  questions  that  simply  had  to  be 
put  up  to  the  king.  Kings  have  odd  ideas  about  being 
approached  nowadays,  and  one  gains  nothing  by  running  up 
to  the  front  door  of  the  palace  and  asking  for  the  king — 
nothing,  that  is,  except  causing  a  royal  retainer  to  drop  dead 
with  horror.  So  I  asked  some  Greeks  what  to  do,  and  they 
replied  that  I  should  get  the  American  minister  to  take  me 
over  to  the  palace  and  sign  the  king's  visitors'  book  for  me, 
and  tell  the  court  chamberlain  that  I  had  never  been  caught 
stealing  spoons  from  any  royal  palace  to  the  best  of  his 
knowledge  and  belief,  and  ask  the  court  chamberlain  to  ask 
the  king  whether  he  would  deign  to  receive  me  in  audience 
two  weeks  from  next  Friday.  This  advice  was  worthless, 
however,  for  in  the  first  place  the  American  minister  had 
resigned,  and  in  the  second  place  the  officials  of  the  Ameri- 
can Legation  were  not  permitted  to  know  that  such  a  person 
as  King  Constantine  existed,  and  in  the  third  place  I  was  in 
a  hurry  to  get  out  of  town.  So  I  wrote  a  brief,  chatty, 
modest  letter  to  the  court  chamberlain  and  asked  him  to  date 
me  up  with  the  king.  Two  days  elapsed,  during  which  no 
reply  came  from  the  chamberlain — probably  because  of  the 
press  of  chamberlaining  duties.  So  I  wrote  another  letter, 
more  brief,  less  chatty  and  much  less  modest;  and  this 
time  the  court  chamberlain  dropped  his  chamberlaining 
long  enough  to  attend  to  my  case. 

"Royal  Palace,  27  March  /g  April,  1921,"  ran  the  reply 
to  my  note — the  Greeks  use  two  dates,  instead  of  daylight 
saving  and  standard  time  as  we  do —  "Dear  Sir:  In  reply 
to  your  demand,  I  hasten  to  inform  you  that  His  Majesty 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  253 

will  receive  you  in  audience  to-morrow  morning,  Sunday  the 
28  March  /io  April  at  12  o'clock.  I  feel  obliged  to  inform 
you  beforehand  that  His  Majesty,  in  granting  this  audience, 
to  not  intend  to  give  an  interview  on  the  present  political 
situation.  MERCATI,  MARSHAL  OF  THE  ROYAL  COURT." 

This  had  a  poor  sound ;  for  if  the  king  didn't  intend  to 
talk  any  politics,  he  would  be  forced  to  confine  his  conversa- 
tion to  such  subjects  as  "Why  Excavated  Statues  Have  No 
Arms"  or  "Why  I  Prefer  the  Hop  to  the  Poppy." 

At  noon  on  the  day  of  my  appointment  a  large  blue- 
plush  footman,  who  spoke  German  as  though  he  had  never 
been  in  Greece,  admitted  me  and  ushered  me  into  an 
antechamber  where  a  startled  young  woman  was  standing 
with  a  lighted  cigarette  behind  her  back  and  smoke  clouds 
oozing  out  on  every  side  of  her.  She  evidently  didn't  want 
me  to  know  that  she  smoked.  We  eyed  each  other  warily 
while  the  smoke  clouds  grew  thicker.  Count  Mercati  for- 
tunately appeared  before  the  cigarette  burned  down  to  the 
young  woman's  fingers  and  ushered  me  into  an  inner  ante- 
chamber. Then  he  left  me,  returned,  and  led  me  into  an 
even  innerer  antechamber  which  had  a  large  oil  painting  of 
the  king  on  the  wall.  Then  he  went  out  again  and  stayed 
some  little  time;  and  when  he  returned  he  whispered  sadly 
in  my  ear:  "The  king  is  waiting  to  receive  you."  He 
couldn't  have  had  a  more  melancholy  air  if  he  had  been 
announcing  that  my  entire  family  had  been  destroyed  or  that 
my  two  dogs  had  run  away  and  couldn't  be  found.  He  led 
me  down  a  long  corridor  and  up  to  a  mahogany  door  in 
front  of  which  stood  a  man  in  an  olive-colored  uniform, 
bushy  blue-black  whiskers  and  a  malevolent  frown. 

"You  must  not  speak  to  the  king  on  political  matters," 
said  Count  Mercati;  and  he  looked  at  me  with  unutterable 


254  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

melancholy,  while  the  bush-bearded  door-guard  stared  at 
me  venomously,  as  though  he  had  selected  the  spot  where 
he  was  going  to  ventilate  me  with  the  dagger  which  he 
unquestionably  carried  under  his  armpit  or  down  the  back 
of  his  neck — or  in  his  whiskers. 

"There's  nothing  to  talk  to  him  about  if  I  can't  talk  on 
political  matters,"  I  protested.  "There's  nothing  in  Greece 
but  politics.  What  do  you  expect  me  to  do  in  there,  any- 
way?" 

"Personal  impressions  only,"  whispered  the  count  sadly, 
"personal  impressions  only." 

He  dragged  me  along  toward  the  door,  and  the  man  with 
the  bushy  beard  showed  his  teeth  at  me  viciously.  "I  don't 
want  any  personal  impressions,"  I  protested.  "What's  the 
use...."  Just  then  the  door  opened,  and  the  king  was 
standing  just  inside  it.  Our  argument  came  to  an  end  and 
I  tried  to  twist  my  face  into  a  polite  smirk.  The  count 
mumbled  a  few  sad  words  and  faded  from  sight.  The  king 
shook  hands  briskly,  looked  pleasant,  urged  me  to  sit  down, 
and  took  a  seat  behind  his  desk. 

Constantine,  as  I  have  said  before,  is  a  highly  impressive 
person.  He  is  six  feet  three  inches  tall  and  correspondingly 
broad.  His  eyes  are  blue  and  his  smile  is  attractive  and  the 
glitter  of  the  medals  on  his  chest  is  soothing  to  the  eye.  He 
is  fifty-three  years  old,  but  looks  about  forty — and  he  talks, 
I  might  add,  with  as  little  regard  for  accuracy,  truth  and 
judgment  as  though  he  were  fifteen.*  But  he  certainly  makes 


*Over  a  month  after  the  original  publication  of  this  interview,  the 
following  despatch  appeared  in  the  New  York  Times: 

"WASHINGTON,  Oct.  14.— The  Greek  Legation  to-day  is- 
sued an  official  statement,  on  instructions  from  its  government, 
denying  certain  statements  alleged  to  have  been  made  by  King 
Constantine  of  Greece  to  an  American  magazine  writer,  in  which, 
the  Legation  declares,  Constantine  was  made  to  appear  to  have 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  255 

a  natty-looking  king.  When  he  appears  in  public,  he  usually 
tops  himself  off  with  a  plumed  hat  of  about  three  quarts 
capacity.  When  he  removes  his  headgear,  his  strangely 
knobby,  elongated  and  naked  head  fascinates  the  beholder. 
It  is  a  true  dome  of  thought,  large  enough  to  hold  the  brains 
of  three  or  four  fairly  brainy  people — though  there  is  no 
evidence  to  show  that  it  holds  more  than  enough  for  the  king. 


made  'highly  discourteous  remarks  about  the  American  political 
regime.' 

"  The  Greek  Legation.'  the  statement  read,  'is  in  receipt  of 
instructions  from  the  Hellenic  Government  to  deny  outright  cer- 
tain statements  alleged  to  have  been  made  by  the  King  of  the 
Hellenes  to  an  American  journalist,  Mr.  Kenneth  Roberts,  who, 
in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  of  September  10,  published  an  ar- 
ticle mentioning  an  interview  with  King  Constantine,  in  which  the 
King  of  the  Hellenes  is  made  to  appear  as  having  uttered  certain 
highly  discourteous  remarks  about  the  American  political  regime. 

"  'By  the  expressed  desire  of  His  Majesty,  the  Hellenic  Gov- 
ernment denies  in  a  most  categorical  way  that  King  Constantine 
ever  made,  either  to  Mr.  Roberts  or  to  any  one  else,  any  remarks 
about  the  American  form  of  government,  or  about  the  former 
Premier,  Mr.  Venizelos. 

"  The  words  attributed  to  His  Majesty  have  never  been 
uttered.'  " 

In  the  denial,  to  put  it  bluntly  but  accurately,  His  Majesty  appears 
in  his  characteristic  role. 

The  interview  as  here  printed  is  exactly  as  it  was  originally  writ- 
ten. It  is  an  accurate  transcription  of  the  conversation  between  Con- 
stantine and  myself.  Nothing  that  Constantine  said  to  me  was  said  in 
confidence ;  and  he  was  fully  aware  at  the  time  that  he  was  talking 
for  publication.  On  the  day  of  the  interview  and  en  the  following  day. 
for  the  purpose  of  checking  up  the  statements  which  Constantine  made 
to  me,  I  went  over  the  more  important  portions  of  the  interview  with 
several  prominent  Greeks,  and  also  with  Mr.  W.  L.  Lowrie.  American 
Consul  General  in  Athens.  Mr.  James  Mills,  the  Associated  Press 
correspondent  in  Athens,  Director  Hill  of  the  American  Archaeological 
School  in  Athens,  Ex-Mayor  McClellan,  of  New  York,  and  Prince 
Demidoff,  Russian  Ambassador  in  Athens.  It  was  generally  known 
in  Athens  that  the  king  had  talked  freely  and  unwisely;  and  nobody 
was  surprised;  for  his  tongue  is  hung  in  the  middle,  as  was  the  ex- 
kaiser's;  and  even  the  Greeks  who  like  him  have  a  proverb  to  the  ef- 
fect ^  that  he  opens  his  mouth  too  wide  and  keeps  it  open  too  long. 
He  is  a  thoroughly  bad  king,  as  the  Allies  have  already  discovered  to 
their  great  cost  in  men  and  treasure,  and  as  Greece  herself  will  dis- 
cover to  her  greater  and  greater  cost  as  time  goes  on. 

K.  L.  R. 


256  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

It  is  the  shiniest  head  that  I  ever  saw,  and  it  wouldn't  have 
surprised  me  at  all  to  learn  that  his  valet  goes  over  it  every 
morning  with  an  oily  rag. 

On  the  wall  behind  the  king's  desk  hang  two  small 
autographed  photographs — one  of  the  czar,  who  was  over- 
thrown and  killed,  and  one  of  the  kaiser,  who  is  an  exile  and 
a  greatly  despised  man 

One  observes  certain  etiquette  with  a  king,  or  runs  the 
risk  of  having  His  Majesty  summon  a  royal  retainer  to  give 
one  a  royal  boot  out  into  the  royal  sidewalk.  When  address- 
ing him,  one  says  "Your  Majesty"  unless  one  forgets.  One 
also  doesn't  burst  right  out  with  some  conventional  remark 
like  "Aren't  you  putting  on  weight,  King?"  but  preserves  a 
decorous  calm  until  His  Majesty  shatters  the  silence.  And 
when  the  king  rises  from  his  chair,  it's  a  sign  that  the 
audience  is  over,  and  that  one  needn't  hang  around  any 
longer  in  the  hope  of  getting  an  invitation  to  lunch :  con- 
sequently an  interviewer  has  to  work  fast  because  of  his 
constant  fear  that  the  king  will  get  up  before  all  his  ques- 
tions have  been  asked. 

After  the  king  had  made  the  usual  opening  of  asking 
how  long  I  had  been  in  Athens,  I  told  him  that  I  wouldn't 
have  taken  up  his  valuable  time  if  I  had  known  that  Count 
Mercati  had  requested  him  not  to  talk  to  me  on  any  political 
matters.  That,  I  told  him,  left  us  nothing  to  talk  about  but 
Prohibition. 

"It  is  not  necessary  to  talk  about  Prohibition,"  said  Con- 
stantine,  who  speaks  English  perfectly.  "What  were  some 
of  the  questions  that  you  wanted  to  ask  me?" 

I  told  him  that  I  wanted  to  hear  what  he  had  to  say 
about  his  failure  to  recognize  that  his  son,  Alexander,  had 
actually  been  king  of  Greece. 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  257 

"I  never  gave  up  the  throne,"  said  Constantine.  "I  do 
not  admit  the  right  of  the  Powers  to  come  here  and  tell  me 
\\hat  to  do,  any  more  than  England  would  recognize  my 
right  to  throw  Lloyd-George  out  of  office  if  I  didn't  like  his 
policies.  Alexander  wasn't  king  because  I  never  stopped 
being  king.  What  difference  does  it  make,  anyway?" 

"For  one  thing,"  I  told  him,  "the  Powers  are  afraid 
that  their  agreements  with  Alexander's  government  may  be 
repudiated  if  his  government  is  declared  illegal." 

"Ah,"  said  the  king,  "then  it's  all  a  matter  of  money. 
Well,  under  no  circumstances  would  we  repudiate  any  of  the 
agreements  made  with  Alexander's  government.  The  whole 
business  of  suspecting  me  and  my  government  of  doing  such 
a  thing  is  a  crazy  idea  that  sprang  up  during  the  war — a 
crazy  idea  like  the  idea  of  democracy.  Take  America,  for 
example,  and  all  her  talk  of  democracy:  why,  there's  no 
more  democracy  in  America  than  there  is  in  my  boot " 

I  told  him  that  there  was  probably  more  democracy  in 
America  than  he  realized,  and  that  the  reason  for  his  lack  of 
realization  was  possibly  due  to  his  lack  of  familiarity  with 
democracy  as  practised  in  America.  "Your  government  has 
just  jailed  Lambrachis,  the  editor  of  Patris,"  I  told  him, 
"for  publishing  the  reasons  for  the  Greek  defeat  in  Asia 
Minor  a  few  days  ago.  That  is  a  thing  that  couldn't  happen 
in  America,  and  a  thing  that  makes  every  American  warm 
under  the  collar." 

"Yes,  that  is  correct,"  said  Constantine.  "You  see, 
Lambrachis  wrote  things  that  upset  the  people.  All  of  the 
things  that  he  wrote  were  lies.  We  can  not  permit  the  people 
to  be  upset." 

I  told  Constantine  that  my  information  on  the  battle  in 
Asia  Minor,  drawn  from  three  official  and  reliable  sources, 


258  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

confirmed  every  word  that  Lambrachis  had  written;  and  I 
reproduce  the  conversation  exactly  as  it  occurred  in  order  to 
show  Constantine's  sloppy  cerebration. 

"It  was  not  the  truth :  not  at  all,"  said  Constantine. 
"The  newspapermen  are  unreliable  for  the  most  part,  and 
they  lie  to  the  people  in  order  to  stir  them  up  against  me." 

"Are  they  successful?"  I  asked. 

"No,  not  at  all,"  said  Constantine. 

"Do  the  people  become  upset  at  their  attempts?"  I  asked. 

"No,  no,  no !"  said  Constantine  emphatically. 

"Then  why  put  them  in  jail?"  I  asked,  having  worked 
the  king  around  to  denying  that  Lambrachis  had  done  the 
thing  for  which  he  had  claimed  he  was  imprisoned. 

Constantine  was  unaware  of  having  slipped.  "We  put 
them  in  jail  to  teach  them  to  be  reliable,"  he  replied  calmly. 

"Why  doesn't  the  Greek  government  tell  the  people  the 
truth  about  the  Asia  Minor  campaign  ?"  I  asked. 

Constantine  stared  at  me  with  innocent  baby-blue  eyes. 
"Why,"  said  he,  "we  issue  official  communiques  to  the 
people." 

"Yes,"  said  I,  "but  they're  worthless." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Constantine. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  I.  "Take  the  matter  of  mobilization, 
for  example.  Before  coming  here,  I  saw  a  Reuter  despatch 
in  a  London  paper  declaring  that  there  was  great  enthusiasm 
over  the  mobilization  of  troops  for  the  Asia  Minor  War. 
On  reaching  Athens,  I  learned  that  there  had  been  no  more 
enthusiasm  over  it  than  over  a  funeral.  I  went  to  the  Reuter 
correspondent  about  it,  and  learned  from  him  that  the  lying 
despatch  had  been  sent  by  the  Greek  Press  Bureau  to  the 
Reuter  office  in  London,  and  accepted  by  the  London  office 
as  a  bona  fide  statement." 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  259 

Constantine  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "There  was 
enthusiasm  over  it,"  he  said. 

"Then  Your  Majesty  is  the  only  one  who  thinks  so,"  I 
told  him. 

I  asked  him  why  he,  as  a  military  man,  should  have  per- 
mitted so  many  experienced  officers  to  be  removed  from 
their  commands  just  before  the  offensive  against  the  Turks 
and  to  be  replaced  by  swivel-chair  officers — a  move  that  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  crushing  Greek  defeat. 

"That  isn't  true,"  said  Constantine.  "A  few  officers 
have  been  removed  in  past  months ;  but  none  were  removed 
just  before  the  offensive." 

I  told  him  that  this  was  directly  contrary  to  the  knowl- 
edge possessed  by  the  representatives  of  the  Great  Powers 
in  Athens  and  by  foreign  correspondents. 

Constantine  looked  at  me  reproachfully.  "You  have 
been  talking  to  Venizelists,"  said  he. 

"I've  been  talking  to  Venizelists,  Royalists,  Americans 
and  Englishmen,"  I  replied.  "I  have  talked  to  a  great  many 
Greeks  of  different  stations  in  life  and  I  find  it  almost 
impossible  to  find  one  who  doesn't  lie  to  me." 

"That  is  true,"  replied  the  king,  looking  at  me  thought- 
fully. "They  are  hard  to  find." 

"If  Diogenes  had  lived,"  I  hazarded,  "he  would  still  be 
hunting." 

The  king  looked  at  me  blankly.  "The  Venizelists  espe- 
cially," he  said  at  length,  "are  great  liars.  Venizelos  him- 
self was  a  terrible  liar  and  deceived  every  one."  He  then 
launched  into  a  vituperative  tirade  against  Venizelos  which 
was  only  valuable  in  so  far  as  it  showed  the  pettiness  to 
whicht  the  ruler  of  a  nation  could  descend.  I  told  the  king 
that  the  best  informed  statesmen  of  Europe  and  America 


260  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

held  views  exactly  opposite  to  his  own,  and  that  Venizelos 
was  considered  a  patriot,  an  idealist,  an  honest  man  and  the 
only  genuine  statesman  that  Greece  possessed. 

"If  America  thinks  that,"  said  the  king  wrathfully,  "why 
in  hell  doesn't  America  take  him  and  use  him?  Maybe 
you  can  tell  me  how  Venizelos  came  to  Athens  a  poor  man 
in  1910,  and  how  he  has  been  able  to  leave  Athens  owning 
two  houses,  to  travel  all  over  the  world,  to  have  a  villa  at 
Nice  and  to  stay  at  the  best  hotels  when  he  travels." 

The  facts  are  these:  Venizelos  was  presented  with  a 
house — one  house — in  Athens  by  an  ardent  admirer  and 
supporter.  He  owned  no  other.  When  he  left  Athens,  he 
sold  the  house ;  and  on  the  proceeds  from  the  sale  he  has  been 
living  ever  since.  I  was  in  Nice  when  Venizelos  was  there, 
and  he  was  staying  in  the  villa  of  a  friend.  These  facts  are 
known  to  Royalists  and  Venizelists  alike.  I  said  as  much 
to  Constantine,  and  he  merely  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Has  Your  Majesty  heard,"  I  asked,  "that  Venizelos 
intends  to  go  to  America  and  Japan  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  he,  with  a  sneer,  "I  hear  he's  going  to  fix 
up  the  differences  between  the  two  countries.  When  he  fin- 
ishes with  that,  America'd  better  send  him  to  Mexico  to  fix 
up  a  few  things  there,  too." 

I  asked  him  what  Greece  intended  to  do  for  the  twenty- 
seven  thousand  starving  and  disease-ridden  Greek  colonists 
at  Salonika.  "Oh,  yes,"  said  he,  "I  understand  the  situation 
is  bad  there;  but  Demidoff  has  recognized  these  people  as 
Russian  subjects.  There  is  some  money  left  over  from  the 
Kolchak  government;  and  since  Demidoff  has  recognized 
them  as  Russians,  the  money  will  be  applied  to  them.  Con- 
sequently their  condition  will  be  greatly  improved." 

As  I  have  said,  these  people  are  Greeks,  though  they 


THEY  SOMETIMES  COME  BACK  261 

come  from  the  so-called  Greek  Caucasus,  a  part  of  Russia. 
They  were  brought  by  the  Greek  government  which  pre- 
ceded Constantine's.  The  careless  and  cynical  manner  in 
which  Constantino  washed  his  hands  of  them  sounded  sus- 
picious ;  so  when  I  left  the  palace  I  went  straight  to  Prince 
Demidoff,  who  is  the  Russian  ambassador  in  Athens.  I 
told  him  what  the  king  said,  and  he  was  horrified. 

"Of  course,"  said  he,  "I  was  willing  to  recognize  them  as 
Russians  for  humanitarian  reasons.  They  are  Greeks  from 
Old  Russia,  and  the  Greeks  are  letting  them  die  by  thou- 
sands. The  money  that  we  can  apply  to  their  relief  is  the 
merest  drop  in  the  bucket,  but  it's  better  than  no  relief  at 
all.  It  was  a  Greek  scheme,  and  the  burden  of  it  is  on  the 
Greeks.  Neither  the  king  nor  the  Greek  nation  can  crawl 
out  of  their  obligations  in  any  such  way.  If  the  king  wishes 
you  or  the  world  to  believe  that  there  is  enough  Russian 
money  materially  to  better  the  lot  of  the  Salonika  colonists, 
he  is  doing  a  very  evil  thing."  And  that  answers  the  king's 
answer  to  me. 

I  asked  the  king  about  the  public-school  situation. 
"Why,"  I  asked  him,  "do  you  permit  your  minister  of  edu- 
cation to  wreck  the  school  system  of  your  entire  nation?" 
He  replied  that  the  school  situation  was  rather  unfortunate 
and  that  the  minister  of  education  had  possibly  been  a  trifle 
over-zealous  toward  the  Venizelists.  "Then  why  don't  you 
remedy  it?"  I  asked.  "You  can  do  it  with  a  word."  The 
king  smiled  pleasantly  and  replied  that  these  things  would 
quickly  straighten  themselves  out.  Can  you  beat  it!  as 
Henry  James  used  to  say. 

We  discussed  a  great  many  interesting  matters,  and  in 
practically  all  of  them  Constantine  revealed  an  almost  bound- 
less capacity  for  soaking  up  misinformation  and  exuding 


262  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

deliberate  falsehoods.  Never,  in  a  fairly  wide  experience 
with  persons  in  high  positions  in  America  and  Europe,  have 
I  met  a  man  who  lied  and  evaded  the  truth  as  easily  and  as 
consistently  as  the  king-  of  Greece. 

He  laughed  heartily  at  the  manner  in  which  the  foreign 
correspondents  had  gone  astray  on  the  November  elections. 
"All  of  them,"  he  chuckled,  "wrote  to  their  papers  that  it 
would  be  a  Venizelos  victory.  You  see,  these  reporters  are 
crooked.  All  of  them  were  under  instructions  from  their 
editors  as  to  what  to  write;  so  they  wrote  lies."  Wouldn't 
it,  in  the  words  of  the  English  professors,  get  your  goat  ? 

I  asked  him  whether  he  had  heard  from  the  kaiser 
recently.  He  said  that  he  hadn't.  He  even  said  that  he 
hadn't  received  a  copy  of  the  kaiser's  defense,  worked  up  by 
the  kaiser  in  diary  form  and  sent  out  to  his  friends  to  prove 
that  he  had  no  part  in  starting  the  war.  He  had  never  even 
heard  of  this  document,  he  claimed,  and  if  he  was  telling  the 
truth,  it  helps  to  show  his  failure  to  keep  track  of  events  in 
the  outside  world. 

At  the  end  of  the  notes  of  my  interview  with  Constan- 
tine  are  jotted  the  rough  impressions  which  his  talk  made  on 
me :  "This  short-sighted  individual,"  they  read,  "has  abso- 
lutely failed  to  profit  by  his  own  past  experience  and  the 
experiences  of  his  brother  monarchs.  Instead  of  getting 
together  the  warring  factions  of  his  country  and  stepping  on 
the  cheap  grafters  and  crooks,  he  lets  his  petty  spite  and  his 
momentary  desires  regulate  his  conduct.  The  king  of 
Greece  is  about  as  big,  mentally,  as  a  pint  of  snow-water 
half  poured  out."  After  plenty  of  time  for  contemplation, 
these  impressions  still  stand  unrevised.  There  are  only  a 
few  kings  left  in  the  world ;  but  there  are  still  too  many  of 
them.  Sometimes  they  come  back ,  but  not  for  long. 


The  Beer  Worshipers 

THE  Briton  of  to-day  is  the  descendant  of  Saxons  and 
of  Northmen  who  came  out  of  the  north  with  the  most 
highly  developed  capacity  for  malt  liquors  ever  seen  outside 
of  tank-car  circles.  The  early  chronicles  of  England  are  all 
splattered  with  beer-nights  and  keg-parties  and  ale-assem- 
blies of  a  most  generous  and  comprehensive  nature.  The 
old  Saxon  fighters  looked  with  contempt  and  loathing  on 
the  mollycoddle  whose  early  training  had  not  fitted  him  to 
drain  a  two-quart  flagon  of  ale  without  pausing  for  breath ; 
and  the  genuine  hearty  feeder  of  ancient  England  invariably 
sucked  up  at  least  four  gallons  of  home-brew  between  the 
bringing  in  of  the  roast  ox  and  the  final  fist-fight  between 
the  dinner  guests.  The  enormous  amounts  absorbed  by  the 
members  of  every  class  of  society  in  the  early  days  of  Eng- 
land have  sometimes  caused  scientists  to  venture  the  opinion 
that  their  bodies  must  have  been  accordion-pleated. 

This  passionate  addiction  to  alcoholic  beverages  on  the 
part  of  the  Britons  did  not  stop  with  the  earliest  representa- 
tives of  the  race.  The  Normans,  that  unsavory  aggregation 
of  thieves,  murderers  and  pirates  who  have  become  very 
popular  as  ancestors  in  spite  of  their  offensive  personal 
habits,  came  over  from  France  and  conquered  the  Saxons. 
The  Saxons  absorbed  them  and  taught  them  how  to  absorb 

263 


264  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

beer,  which  they  did  as  though  to  the  manner  born.  The 
Norman  barons,  in  their  baronial  halls,  drank  themselves 
purple  in  the  face  each  night,  quaffing  the  nut-brown  ale 
until  their  quaffers  were  completely  submerged.  They 
couldn't  get  up  in  the  morning  without  a  stoup  of  Malmsey, 
and  they  shuddered  at  the  thought  of  riding  out  for  a  pleas- 
ant afternoon  of  robbery  and  arson  unless  they  were  forti- 
fied with  a  two-quart  nip  or  stirrup-cup  of  spiced  wine. 
Whenever  they  tarried  for  a  moment  to  tighten  a  saddle- 
girth  or  to  hew  off  the  head  of  a  serf  whose  looks  they 
didn't  like,  all  of  the  adjacent  residents  came  running  out 
with  buckets  of  mulled  ale  for  the  barons  and  their  gallant 
retainers.  Everybody  was  ready  to  drop  everything  and 
settle  down  to  several  hours  of  steady  drinking  at  a  moment's 
notice.  Kings  and  clowns,  barons  and  bakers,  archbishops 
and  actors  and  archers,  princesses  and  publicans  and  prel- 
ates and  pot-boys  drank  whatever  they  could  get  whenever 
they  could  get  it,  so  long  as  it  possessed  an  alcoholic  con- 
tent. Water  as  a  beverage  was  viewed  with  marked  abhor- 
rence. The  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England  in  the  reign  of 
King  Henry  VI  states  that  "the  inhabitants  of  England 
drink  no  water  except  at  certain  times,  on  a  religious  score 
and  by  way  of  penance."  In  other  words,  one  of  the  most 
severe  punishments  which  an  Englishman  could  inflict  on 
himself,  short  of  death  or  mutilation,  was  water-drinking. 

Down  through  the  centuries,  from  Hengist  and  Horsa 
to  Haig  and  Haig,  the  Britons  and  their  drink  have  been  as 
inseparable  as  Damon  and  Pythias  or  Abelard  and  Heloise. 
They  have  believed  that  strong  men  need  strong  fare.  They 
have  eaten  great  masses  of  heavy,  soggy,  boiled  foods  and 
washed  them  down  with  a  veritable  Johnstown  flood  of 
beer  and  ale  and  stout  and  bitter  and  stronger  beverages. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  265 

History  fails  to  tell  us  where  the  Saxon  chieftains  and  the 
Norman  barons  obtained  the  apparently  inexhaustible  sup- 
ply of  beer  and  ale  with  which  they  saturated  themselves 
each  day;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  all  of  them  maintained 
commodious  breweries  on  their  premises — so  that  in  case 
of  siege  their  beer  wouldn't  be  cut  off.  It  was  always 
believed  that  a  two-fisted  Briton  might  as  well  be  deprived 
of  his  legs  and  his  eyesight  as  of  his  beer. 

The  example  which  these  early  Britons  set  to  succeeding 
generations  was  not  wasted.  To-day  there  are  three  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  forty-eight  breweries  in  the  United 
Kingdom;  and  in  the  year  1919,  during  which  alcoholic 
beverages  could  only  be  sold  for  a  few  hours  every  day, 
the  sturdy  Britons  lapped  up  one  million,  one  hundred  and 
sixty-three  thousand  gallons  of  beer,  or  nine  thousand  three 
hundred  and  four  million  one-pint  glasses.  When  one 
plunges  boldly  into  the  mystic  realm  of  statistics  and  bandies 
these  overwhelming  figures  about  in  the  manner  peculiar  to 
statisticians,  one  begins  to  realize  that  the  early  Saxons  and 
Normans,  determined  and  hardened  drinkers  though  they 
may  have  been,  couldn't  hold  a  sponge  to  their  present-day 
descendants.  If  converted  into  rain,  for  example,  there 
would  be  enough  moisture  in  these  nine  billion  glasses  of 
beer  to  provide  a  five-week  rainfall  for  the  entire  Sahara 
Desert.  If  mixed  with  water  and  run  through  a  one-inch 
hose  and  directed  against  the  planet  Mars,  there  would  be 
enough  liquid  to  fill  all  the  Martian  canals  with  one  per 
cent.  beer.  With  more  than  nine  billion  glasses  of  beer 
consumed  by  the  British  people  in  one  year's  time,  the 
person  who  nicknamed  England  a  "tight  little  island"  is 
entitled  to  commend  himself  highly  for  his  conservatism  in 
using  the  word  "tight." 


266  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

In  England  and  Wales  alone  there  are  eighty-four  thou- 
sand public-houses  or  pubs,  as  they  are  affectionately  called 
by  the  English.  In  addition  to  the  pubs,  there  are  over 
twenty-two  thousand  places  which  have  off  licenses.  At 
a  pub  anybody  can  get  whatever  sort  of  liquor  he  wants  and 
pour  it  down  his  throat  or  in  his  hair  or  into  a  bucket, 
depending  on  how  he  feels  at  the  moment  of  purchase.  At 
an  off  license,  however,  he  can  only  buy  it  to  take  away  with 
him  and  drink  around  the  corner  or  up  an  alley  or  in  the 
privacy  of  his  own  chambers.  Besides  the  pubs  and  the  off 
licenses  there  are,  in  England  and  Wales  alone,  over  eight 
thousand  clubs  in  which  kindred  souls  may  assemble  and 
accumulate  skinfuls  of  alcoholic  beverages  in  emulation  of 
their  gay  and  care-free  progenitors,  the  Saxons  and  the 
Normans. 

Thus,  in  England  and  Wales,  there  are  one  hundred 
and  fourteen  thousand  places  where  drinks  can  be  obtained. 
Every  seventh  shop,  throughout  England  and  Wales,  is  a 
drink-shop.  There  is  one  drink-shop  for  every  fifty-seven 
dwelling-houses.  During  the  year  1919,  the  sturdy  citizens 
of  the  United  Kingdom  spent  for  drink  alone  the  enormous 
sum  of  three  hundred  and  eighty-six  million  pounds,  or, 
with  the  pound  sterling  at  par,  one  million,  nine  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  dollars.  During  the  year  ending  March 
31,  1920,  the  estimated  expenditure  on  intoxicants  in  the 
United  Kingdom  was  four  hundred  and  ten  million  pounds 
or  more  than  two  billion  dollars  if  the  pound  sterling  is 
figured  at  par.  It  was  expected  to  run  above  two  billion, 
five  hundred  million  dollars  during  1921.  Two  billion, 
five  hundred  million  dollars  is  a  large  slice  of  money  for 
the  people  of  any  nation  to  toss  away  lightly.  It  would  be 
a  large  slice  if  England  were  an  excessively  wealthy  nation. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  267 

Just  at  present  England  is  a  debtor  nation,  burdened  with  a 
war  debt  that  makes  the  most  willing  taxpayer  lie  awake 
late  at  night  bathed  in  a  cold  perspiration.  There  are  some 
pessimists,  staunch  Britons  too,  who  talk  darkly  of  bank- 
ruptcy for  England.  Every  one  agrees  that  if  England 
wishes  to  regain  her  pre-war  position,  she  must  save  and 
produce.  Yet  not  even  an  ancient  Saxon,  drowsing  under 
his  dinner  table,  with  suds  on  his  long  flaxen  mustache  and 
an  overdose  of  green  beer  under  his  belt,  would  be  so 
muddled  as  to  think  that  the  expenditure  of  two  and  one- 
half  billion  dollars  by  Britons  for  drink  in  one  year's  time 
was  either  economical  or  productive. 

For  many  years  the  English  working  man  has  been 
spoken  of  by  many  sorts  of  observers  as  "sodden  with 
drink."  The  Scotchman  who  rolls  out  on  the  streets  of 
Glasgow  of  a  Saturday  evening  and  gets  himself  lit  up,  as 
the  saying  goes,  like  an  ocean  liner,  refers  pityingly  to  his 
English  beer-drinking  brother  as  "sodden  with  drink." 
Journalists,  temperance  workers,  army  surgeons,  Scotch 
whisky  manufacturers,  big  employers  of  labor,  have  repeat- 
edly applied  the  phrase  "sodden  with  drink"  to  the  English 
laborer.  The  English  resent  the  phrase.  Even  the  Eng- 
lish temperance  workers  are  inclined  to  think  that  the 
English  aren't  so  sodden  as  the  Scotch.  A  Scotchman  and 
an  Englishman  will  argue  for  hours  as  to  whether  the  Scotch 
or  English  are  the  more  sodden ;  and  a  listener  is  almost  in- 
evitably forced  to  the  conclusion  that  all  Scotchmen  and  all 
Englishmen  are  drunk  all  the  time — a  conclusion  which  is 
entirely  erroneous.  Yet  England  boasts  a  thousand  brew- 
eries and  eighty  thousand  pubs  and  a  population  which 
spends  billions  of  dollars  each  year  on  billions  of  glasses  of 
beer.  The  English  may  not  be  sodden  with  drink;  but  a 


268  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

comfortable  percentage  of  them  are  constantly  surrounded 
by  a  distinctly  beery  atmosphere  and  possess  beer  breaths 
of  such  virility  that  coats  and  hats  may  almost  be  hung  on 
them. 

I  fell  into  conversation  one  day  with  a  solicitor  from  the 
flourishing  city  of  Reading,  and  the  subject  of  Prohibition 
came  up  between  us,  as  it  always  does  nowadays  between 
an  Englishman  and  an  American.  He  was  a  total  abstainer ; 
but  the  idea  that  England  might  ever  go  Prohibition  struck 
him  as  highly  ludicrous.  He  had  presided  at  a  number  of 
working  men's  meetings,  he  said,  and  he  knew  from  observa- 
tion the  violent  attachment  which  existed  between  an  Eng- 
lish working  man  and  his  beer.  "Why,"  said  he,  "the  Eng- 
lish laborer  worships  his  beer.  He  worships  it,  I  tell  you !" 
Then  he  told  me  a  venerable  story  that  had  to  do  with  an 
English  laborer  who  was  standing  in  the  bar  of  a  pub  dally- 
ing with  a  beaker  of  suds.  A  friend,  in  the  hope  of  pro- 
voking a  fight,  came  to  him  and  indicated  a  third  laborer. 
"  'Arry,  there,"  explained  the  friend,  "  'as  been  carryin'  on 
wiv  yer  wife."  The  first  laborer  frowned  heavily.  "  'E  'as, 
'as  'e,  the  bloomin'  tyke,"  said  he  darkly  and  threateningly, 
"I'll  drink  'is  beer!"  This  teetotaler  from  Reading  assured 
me  that  in  England  you  could  do  anything  you  wanted  with 
beer.  "You  can  buy  all  the  votes  you  want  with  it,"  he 
said.  "The  English  laborer  worships  it !  He  worships  it !" 

These  are,  of  course,  strong  words.  There  are  many 
British  labor  leaders  and  labor  unions  that  have  declared 
themselves  strongly  in  favor  of  Local  Option  and  Temper- 
ance measures,  and  that  would  no  more  think  of  worshiping 
beer  than  they  would  of  worshiping  an  antique  egg.  But 
every  day,  in  every  one  of  England's  eighty  thousand 
pubs,  one  can  find  many  a  man,  and  many  a  woman  too 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  269 

for  that  matter,  whose  overwhelming  admiration  for  beer 
is  the  nearest  thing  to  worship  that  they  will  ever  know. 

Naturally  enough,  the  beer-sopping  in  which  Englishmen 
indulge  so  freely  is  very  gratifying  to  the  individuals  who 
manufacture  the  beer  and  the  individuals  who  sell  it;  but 
it  is  deeply  annoying  to  several  classes  of  people,  prominent 
among  whom  are  those  who  believe  that  a  nation  is  morally 
weakened  by  drink  and  those  who  believe  that  a  nation  is 
economically  handicapped  by  a  heavy  consumption  of 
alcoholic  beverages.  In  England,  as  in  every  country  in 
the  world,  there  have  been  large  numbers  of  Temperance 
advocates  in  evidence  for  many  years;  but  their  strength,  up 
to  the  last  few  years,  has  not  been  such  as  to  cause  the  brew- 
ers and  the  distillers  and  the  publicans  to  toss  restlessly  on 
their  mattresses. 

The  war,  however,  put  a  different  complexion  on  the 
Temperance  movement,  or  the  Prohibition  movement  or 
whatever  you  may  wish  to  call  the  movement  which  is  mak- 
ing the  Liquor  Trade  of  England  moan  sepulchrally  in  its 
sleep.  In  place  of  its  pale,  anemic  complexion,  the  Tem- 
perance movement  suddenly  developed  a  rich,  healthy,  rosy 
complexion.  Instead  of  moving  slowly  and  painfully,  with 
creaking  joints  and  many  a  pause  for  breath,  it  began  to 
leap  hither  and  yon  with  all  the  briskness  of  an  Alpine 
chamois.  This  new  lease  of  life  was  due  firstly  to  the  war 
spirit,  which  made  Englishmen  face  facts  which  they  ordi- 
narily refused  to  face;  secondly  to  Prohibition  in  America 
and  to  the  fear  that  Prohibition  would  so  increase  America's 
efficiency  that  England  would  be  unable  to  compete  with 
her;  and  thirdly  to  the  elections  in  Scotland  in  November, 
1920 — elections  at  which,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  voters 
resident  in  the  British  Isles  were  able  to  cast  a  vote  on  the 


270  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

question  of  whether  or  not  the  districts  in  which  they  lived 
should  be  wet  or  only  damp.  In  Scotland  the  people  voted 
on  Local  Option  for  the  first  time  in  1920.  In  England  the 
voters  not  only  have  never  had  the  opportunity  of  expressing 
their  desires  in  regard  to  liquor,  but  they  are  having  trouble 
in  persuading  Parliament  to  pass  a  bill  which  will  give  them 
the  right  to  vote  on  this  question  in  two  or  five  or  seven  or 
an  indefinite  number  of  years.  The  Temperance  societies 
and  the  Prohibition  societies  in  England  are  not  fighting  for 
Prohibition,  nor  for  anything  which  even  resembles  Prohi- 
bition from  an  American  view-point,  but  for  the  passage  of 
a  bill  which  will  permit  a  man  to  vote  on  whether  or  not 
public-houses  shall  continue  to  sell  alcoholic  beverages  in 
the  district  in  which  he  lives. 

The  English  public-house  system,  I  believe,  is  not  gen- 
erally understood  in  America.  It  is  a  quaint  and  piquant 
system  and  must  be  explained  before  the  arguments  of  the 
Temperance  workers  and  the  Liquor  advocates  are  intro- 
duced. Class  distinction  is  inextricably  mixed  up  with  it, 
just  as  it  is  mixed  up  with  so  many  things  in  England. 

Americans — to  stumble  from  the  subject  for  a  moment — 
are  greatly  bewildered  by  class  distinctions  when  they  go  to 
England  for  a  brief  visit ;  but  Americans  who  have  lived  in 
England  for  a  year  or  so,  claim  that  they  can  distinguish 
between  the  different  English  classes  at  a  glance,  just  as 
some  English  claim  to  be  able  to  do.  In  my  rude,  boorish, 
American  way,  I  question  the  accuracy  of  this  statement. 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  has  said  that  there  are  more  than  two  hun- 
dred classes  to  English  society.  Some  of  the  delicate  dis- 
tinctions between  different  English  classes  are  such  as  to 
give  many  persons  a  slow  shooting  pain  at  the  base  of  the 
brain.  There  is  a  distinction  for  example,  between  a  grad- 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  271 

uate  of  Oxford  University  and  a  graduate  of  London  Uni- 
versity. The  latter  belongs  to  a  lower  class  than  the  former. 
There  is  a  distinction  between  an  Episcopalian,  or  Church  of 
England  clergyman,  and  a  Baptist  or  Congregationalist  or 
Presbyterian  minister.  The  Episcopalian  belongs  to  a 
higher  class  than  the  Nonconformist  ministers.  Working 
men  are  divided  by  rigid  class  distinctions.  Certain  trades 
are  classed  far  higher  than  other  trades.  The  barrister,  who 
argues  a  case  for  a  client,  is  in  a  much  higher  class  than 
the  solicitor  who  approaches  the  barrister  for  the  client  and 
persuades  him  to  accept  the  case.  If  a  member  of  the 
so-called  upper  classes  undertakes  to  sell  stoves  or  cheese 
or  canned  goods,  he  falls  from  the  class  which  he  originally 
occupied  to  a  lower  class.  If,  however,  he  chooses  to  sell 
automobiles,  stocks  and  bonds,  or  land,  he  remains  in  his 
original  class  and  is  not  lowered.  Those  three  pursuits  are 
exempt  from  the  stigma  which  attaches  to  trading  in  all 
other  commodities.  I  question,  however,  whether  an  Ameri- 
can or  an  Englishman,  or  Little  Bright  Eyes  the  Indian 
Control,  or  any  other  agency  known  to  man,  can  tell  at  a 
glance  that  one  man  belongs  to  a  certain  class  because  he 
sells  stock  in  the  Hotair  Oil  Company  of  Rumania  and  that 
another  belongs  to  a  lower  class  because  he  sells  steel  safes. 
That,  however,  is  quibbling.  The  basis  of  English 
classes  is  the  racial  instinct  of  self-preservation — an  instinct 
that  has  only  recently  begun  to  develop  in  America.  There 
are  certain  broad,  well-defined  classes  in  England  which, 
generally  speaking,  can  be  recognized  at  a  glance  by  an 
Englishman.  He  has  an  uncanny  faculty  of  knowing  at 
once  whether — as  a  middle-class  Englishman  put  it  to  me — 
he  should  be  polite  or  rude  or  merely  decent  to  the  persons 
with  whom  he  comes  in  contact.  I  pressed  this  Englishman 


272  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

for  further  information.  "Well,  look  here,"  said  he,  "sup- 
pose a  chap  comes  in  here  dressed  like  a  juke."  He  meant 
duke,  but  he  said  juke.  "What  I  mean,  you  might  have 
trouble  in  knowing  whether  he  was  a  juke  or  a  butler  or  a 
clerk  or  what-not,  what?"  I  acknowledged  that  such  was 
indeed  the  case.  "What  I  mean,"  he  went  on  triumphantly, 
"you  wouldn't  know  until  you  had  talked  with  him  because 
you're  a  blooming  American;  but  I'd  know  as  soon  as  I 
clapped  eyes  on  him;  and  directly  I'd  done  so  I'd  say 
politely:  'Beg  pardon,  but  is  there  anything  I  can  do,  sir?' 
or  I'd  say  roughly:  'Sit  down  over  there  and  wait  your 
turn,'  depending  on  whether  he  was  one  of  the  upper  classes, 
or  one  of  the  servant  class.  I'd  know  at  once." 

This  man  was  a  little  of  a  snob,  but  not  so  much  of  a 
snob  as  he'd  appear  in  the  eyes  of  the  average  American. 
There  is  class  distinction  in  England,  and  the  distinction  is 
recognized  and  acquiesced  in  by  every  class.  The  lower 
the  classes,  the  more  rigid  the  distinctions.  I  have  heard 
it  said  that  there  are  only  two  sorts  of  people  who  can 
mingle  without  embarrassment  with  every  class  of  English 
society,  from  the  top  to  the  bottom :  one  is  an  English  duke ; 
the  other  is  an  agreeable  American.  As  regards  the  duke 
and  the  American,  there  is  no  envy  and  no  jealousy.  They 
are  at  their  ease  with  all  classes,  and  since  they  are  not  sus- 
pected of  snobbishness  or  pride,  all  classes  are  at  ease  with 
them.  But  let  a  member  of  the  English  middle  or  lower 
classes  get  out  of  his  class,  and  he's  as  uncomfortable  and 
ill  at  ease  as  a  cat  in  a  shower-bath. 

The  English  public-house,  therefore,  is  constructed  in 
such  a  manner  that  an  Englishman  of  any  class  that  fre- 
quents one  can  buy  himself  a  beaker  of  so-called  nut-brown 
ale  with  the  minimum  of  mental  anguish. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  273 

Instead  of  containing  one  bar,  as  was  the  case  with  that 
practically  defunct  American  institution,  the  saloon,  the 
English  pub  contains  a  whole  flock  of  bars,  carefully  divided 
from  one  another  by  high  sturdy  partitions,  and  entered  by 
separate  doors. 

The  height  of  elegance  and  luxury  in  pub  circles  is  the 
saloon  lounge,  which  is  a  bar  with  carpets  on  the  floor,  glit- 
tering mirrors  on  the  walls,  and  around  the  walls  leather  or 
plush-covered  divans  on  which  the  weary  beer-drinker  may 
seat  himself  with  his  dish  of  hops  in  sybaritic  luxury.  Next 
below  the  saloon  lounge  is  the  saloon  bar,  which  is  a  smaller 
edition  of  the  lounge,  and  furnished  with  the  same  rich 
elegance.  The  same  class  of  people  enter  the  saloon  bar  that 
enter  the  saloon  lounge ;  and  some  of  the  poorer  pubs  in  the 
cities  dispense  entirely  with  the  saloon  lounge  and  all  the 
heavy  British  opulence  that  goes  with  it.  Every  pub,  how- 
ever, has  its  saloon  bar;  and  to  that  saloon  bar  flock  the 
very  cream,  or  hcait  ton,  of  the  drinking  fraternity. 

Next  below  the  saloon  bar  is  the  private  bar,  which  is  a 
cross  between  the  glittering  elegance  of  a  saloon  bar  and  the 
sawdust-floored  unostentation  of  the  public  bar.  The  public 
bar  caters  exclusively  to  the  lowest  classes,  such  as  dock 
laborers  and  cabmen  and  teamsters  and  unskilled  laborers 
generally.  The  saloon  bar  caters  to  a  rather  indefinite 
lower  middle  class — salesmen  and  stockbrokers'  clerks  and 
other  white-collar  men — which  is  as  high  as  the  pubs  need  to 
go  in  the  catering  line,  since  the  upper  classes  and  the  upper- 
middle  class  do  their  drinking  in  their  homes  and  at  clubs. 
The  private  bar,  therefore,  purveys  liquid  refreshment  to  a 
class  between  the  two— skilled  laborers  and  hard-boiled 
white-collar  men.  In  addition  to  all  these  different  depart- 
ments into  which  the  bars  of  English  pubs  are  divided 


274  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

there  is  one  more:  the  bottle  and  jug  department.  The  bot- 
tle and  jug  department  is  an  appendage  of  the  public  bar; 
and  to  it  come  the  hoarse-voiced  gentry  in  need  of  a  little 
something  on  the  hip,  or  the  ancient  crones  who  wish  to 
take  away  with  them  a  few  shillings'  worth  of  gin  to  solace 
them  during  the  long  night  watches,  or  those  youthful  and 
active  individuals  delegated  to  rush  the  growler,  as  the  say- 
ing goes,  for  their  more  slothful  parents. 

There  is  a  slight  difference  in  price  between  the  drinks 
which  one  gets  in  the  different  divisions  of  an  English 
pub.  In  a  public  bar,  for  example,  one  gets  a  large  glass  of 
dejected-tasting  beer  for  fourpence  ha'penny — which,  trans- 
lated into  American  money  at  the  1921  rate  of  exchange,  is 
seven  cents.  In  the  private  bar  the  same  large  glass  of  so- 
called  beer  costs  a  ha'penny  more.  In  the  saloon  bar,  sur- 
rounded by  plush  and  elegance,  one  pays  the  same  price  for 
a  glass  as  in  the  private  bar;  but  the  glass  is  much  smaller 
and  thinner — sweller,  as  the  patrons  of  the  saloon  bar 
explain. 

That,  then,  is  the  English  drinking-machinery.  Each 
pub  has  its  saloon  bar,  its  private  bar,  its  public  bar  and  its 
bottle  and  jug  department;  and  if  it  is  sufficiently  large,  it 
crowns  them  all  with  a  saloon  lounge  or  super-bar.  Into 
these  different  divisions  its  patrons  fall  with  absolute  and 
unfailing  certainty.  A  man  whose  social  position  entitles 
him  to  enter  the  saloon  bar  would  never  enter  the  public 
bar;  and  a  regular  patron  of  the  public  bar  wouldn't  dream 
of  entering  the  saloon  bar.  If  he  were  to  do  so,  no  objec- 
tion would  be  raised  by  the  bar-maids  or  the  other  bar- 
flies; but  his  own  discomfort  at  being  out  of  his  element 
would  be  excessive.  In  the  course  of  an  exhaustive  exam- 
ination into  the  pubs  of  London  and  environs,  I  collected 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  275 

four  young  men  from  the  public  bar  of  a  Camberwell  pub 
and  led  them  to  the  saloon  bar  of  a  pub  on  the  next  corner. 
They  were  typical  young  men  from  the  London  slums.  They 
were  runty  and  thin,  with  bad  complexions  and  buck  teeth 
and  mufflers  around  their  necks  in  place  of  collars,  and 
tiiey  were  violently  attached  to  an  offensively  bitter  dark- 
brown  fluid  known  to  them  as  stout.  One  of  the  young  men 
had  served  in  France.  He  alone  of  the  four  followed  me 
into  the  saloon  bar  and  he  wasn't  wholly  at  his  ease  by  any 
means.  The  other  three  stood  outside  and  wouldn't  come 
in  until  they  were  dragged  in  by  main  strength.  Even  after 
they  were  safely  in,  with  glasses  of  stout  clutched  in  their 
right  hands  and  with  their  narrow  chests  pushed  firmly 
against  the  bar,  they  felt  and  looked  uncomfortable  because 
they  were  in  the  saloon  bar  instead  of  in  the  public  bar 
where  they  belonged. 

There  are  eighty  thousand  pubs  in  England,  to  say 
nothing  of  eighty  thousand  statisticians  busily  engaged  in 
proving  that  the  eighty  thousand  pubs  are  either  the  salva- 
tion or  the  ruin  of  the  nation.  A  good  Prohibition 
statistician  can  take  a  column  of  figures  and  demonstrate 
conclusively  with  them  that  unless  England  stops  drinking 
in  eleven  years  she  will  be  occupying  a  pauper  asylum.  An 
anti-Prohibition  statistician  can  take  the  same  column  of 
figures  and  prove  with  them  that  if  England  should  stop 
drinking,  she  would  have  to  convert  her  navy  into  coal 
barges  and  subsist  entirely  on  boiled  parsnips  and  suet 
pudding.  One  of  these  statisticians  has  announced  that 
in  England  there  is  one  drink  shop  to  every  two  hundred 
adults  of  twenty  years  of  age  and  upwards.  I  can  not 
vouch  for  the  reliability  of  these  figures,  since  a  long  expe- 
rience with  golf -hand  icappers  and  Central  European  politi- 


276  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

cians  has  convinced  me  that  the  man  who  remarked  that 
there  were  lies,  damned  lies  and  statistics  remarked  a  mouth- 
ful. My  investigations  into  London  pubs,  however,  have 
more  than  once  made  me  think  that  if  there  is  one  pub  to 
every  two  hundred  adults,  one  hundred  and  ninety-eight  of 
the  adults  must  frequently  spend  their  evenings  in  the  pub 
attempting  to  absorb  the  entire  beer-output  of  the  country. 
Unless  a  foreigner  has  made  a  round  of  the  pubs  in  an 
English  city,  he  will  have  difficulty  in  realizing  the  hold 
which  drinking  has  on  the  English  people.  Drinking  in 
England  reached  a  higher  stage  of  development  centuries 
ago  than  it  reached  in  America  even  during  the  hectic 
period  when  young  ladies  removed  and  checked  their  corsets 
on  arriving  at  dances,  and  were  unable  to  be  their  natural 
selves  unless  they  had  about  a  pint  and  a  half  of  whisky 
beneath  their  girdles.  Drinking  in  America  was  a  sort  of 
sideline;  but  in  England  it  was  for  hundreds  of  years  and 
still  is  an  accepted  portion  of  the  daily  routine.  The  pro- 
fessional man,  the  business  man — almost  every  man  whose 
income  is  of  any  size  at  all,  has  beer  or  whisky-and-soda 
with  his  lunch,  and  is  inclined  to  follow  it  up  with  a  glass 
of  port.  With  his  dinner  he  has  champagne  or  a  light  wine 
or  a  whisky-and-soda,  as  his  fancy  dictates,  and  again  tops 
off  with  a  glass  of  port.  Go  to  any  of  the  countless  quiet 
hotels  in  England  to-day;  and  in  every  dining-room  you 
will  find  austere  elderly  ladies  sucking  up  bottles  of  cham- 
pagne with  their  dinners.  As  people  grow  poorer  they  get 
down  to  beer;  but  it  isn't  much  of  an  exaggeration  to  say 
that  all  England  drinks  with  its  meals.  There  never  has 
been  the  sentiment  against  drinking  in  England  that  existed 
in  America.  It  is  not  at  all  unusual  for  English  business 
men,  after  lunch,  to  be  the  proud  possessors  of  penetrating, 


• 

f 


Copyright  Tndtnrood  <f  rndrrwood 
William  E.  (Pussyfoot)  Johnson 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  277 

sixty-candlepower  beer  or  whisky  breaths;  but  if  my  mem- 
ory does  not  fail  me,  the  average  American  business  man, 
even  in  the  days  when  our  large  cities  boasted  a  saloon  on 
every  prominent  corner,  would  have  had  an  apoplectic 
seizure  if  two  or  three  of  his  employees  had  come  back  from 
lunch  exuding  even  the  faintest  of  groggy  odors.  I  know 
a  New  England  town,  for  example,  where,  as  recently  as 
1916,  sentiment  against  alcoholic  beverages  was  so  strong 
that  the  town's  social  leaders  wouldn't  eat  salad  dressing 
made  from  claret  vinegar — if  they  knew  it.  Such  a  state 
of  affairs  wouldn't  exist  in  England.  As  I  have  remarked 
elsewhere,  the  English  have  been  sopping  up  beer  and  ale 
and  everything  else  of  an  alcoholic  nature  that  they  could 
find  ever  since  the  days  of  Hengist  and  Horsa.  In  that 
celebrated  book  on  English  public-school  life  in  the  early 
'40*5,  Tom  Brown's  School  Days,  you  will  find  a  description 
of  a  Saturday-night  singing  at  Rugby.  On  Saturdays  the 
boys  had  a  double  allowance  of  beer  with  their  supper.  They 
saved  it  and  took  it  to  the  schoolhouse  hall  and  lapped  it  up 
in  concert ;  and  the  older  boys,  of  the  ripe  old  age  of  seven- 
teen, brought  in  bottled  beer  and  shared  it  with  the  younger 
boys  of  ten  and  eleven  when  the  school  beer  had  been  con- 
sumed. And  Brooke,  the  hero  of  the  school,  made  a  speech 
in  which  he  advised  the  boys  to  keep  away  from  the  bad 
spirits  and  punch  of  the  public-house  because  "you  get 
plenty  of  good  beer  here,  and  that's  enough  for  you."  Beer 
has  always  been  regarded  by  the  English  as  being  a  harm- 
less— nay,  a  healthful  and  almost  essential  part  of  their  daily 
life,  like  soggy  vegetables  and  damp  bed-sheets. 

It  is  in  the  pubs  that  one  finds  the  British  Beer  Wor- 
shipers practising  their  most  mystic  rites,  subject  to  the  regu- 
lations of  the  Liquor  Control  Board  which,  during  the  war, 


278  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ordained  that  pubs  should  be  open  for  two  and  one-half 
hours  at  noon  and  for  three  hours  in  the  evening.  And  I 
would  like  to  state  once  more  that  even  with  these  restricted 
hours,  the  yearly  post-war  liquor  bill  of  the  United  King- 
dom is  over  two  billion  dollars — more  than  triple  the  entire 
national  expenditure  of  England  in  1907,  which  was  an 
expensive  pre-war  year. 

To  an  American,  the  most  striking  feature  of  the  Eng- 
lish pubs  is  the  enthusiastic  and  whole-hearted  manner  in 
which  the  women  join  with  the  men  in  all  their  ground  and 
lofty  drinking.  Possibly  I  have  selected  the  wrong  phrase 
when  I  say  that  the  women  join  with  the  men.  In  some 
cases  men  and  women  enter  the  pubs  together — a  man  and 
his  wife,  or  a  young  man  and  his  sweetheart — and  then 
again  a  woman  comes  in  alone  and  tosses  down  a  couple  of 
drinks;  or  a  couple  of  women  come  in  together  and  call  for 
two  Burtons,  and  lean  up  against  the  bar  and  discuss  what 
Ella  said  to  'Arry,  or  the  cost  of  hostrich  plumes,  punctuat- 
ing their  remarks  with  long  silent  draughts,  and  paying  no 
attention  to  the  male  drinkers  around  them. 

Lest  this  matter  be  misunderstood  in  America,  I  wish 
to  make  it  plain  that  drinking  is  far  more  general  in  Eng- 
land than  it  ever  was  in  America,  and  that  if  women  of  cer- 
tain classes  in  England  happen  to  prefer  a  glass  of  beer  or 
ale  or  port  or  sherry  to  a  cup  of  tea,  they  drop  into  a  pub 
and  get  it,  just  as  they  would  drop  into  a  tea-house  for  a 
dash  of  orange  pekoe ;  and  nobody  thinks  any  the  worse  of 
them  for  it.  You  see  all  sorts  of  women  in  the  pubs  of 
English  cities.  In  some  sections  of  London  you  see  painted 
ladies  and  drabs  leaning  against  the  bars :  in  others  you  see 
quiet  young  business  women  in  neat  tweeds  snatching  a 
solitary  glass  of  beer  or  sherry :  you  see  venerable  ladies  in 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  279 

their  best  silk  dresses,  and  dowdy  housewives  with  ratty 
false  fronts  projecting  from  under  their  frowzy  hats,  and 
women  of  the  slums  in  greasy  dresses  and  ragged  shawls,  all 
getting  their  stout  or  their  bitter  or  their  Burton  across  the 
bar  and  hoisting  the  brimming  schooners  with  the  aplomb 
of  a  longshoreman.  A  great  many  of  the  women  who  drink 
in  the  pubs  are  all  right;  and  a  great  many  of  them  make 
beasts  of  themselves,  just  as  the  men  do.  Generally  speak- 
ing, there  are  four  men  convicted  for  drunkenness  in  Eng- 
land each  year  for  every  woman  that  is  so  convicted.  Nearly 
eleven  thousand  women  were  convicted  for  drunkenness  in 
England  during  1919 — and  the  number  convicted  is  neces- 
sarily only  a  small  percentage  of  the  number  who  were 
drunk.  The  number,  too,  was  small  because  of  the  war- 
time restrictions  on  the  sale  of  liquor  which  were  still  in 
force.  In  1913  the  number  of  women  convicted  for  drunk- 
enness was  nearer  forty  thousand. 

My  first  pubbing  expedition  in  London  was  made  on  a 
Sunday  in  company  with  a  consul  from  the  American  con- 
sulate-general. Sunday  is  a  great  day  in  England  for 
steady  drinking  among  the  working  classes ;  for  there  is  no 
work  to  distract  their  minds  from  the  matter  in  hand.  The 
men  and  women  flock  to  the  pubs,  which  are  so  crowded 
that  one  must  fairly  fight  his  way  up  to  the  bar.  If  the 
woman  is  unfortunate  enough  to  be  handicapped  by  a  baby- 
in-arms,  she  can  not  settle  down  to  an  uninterrupted  drink- 
ing bout,  but  must  catch  her  drinks  on  the  fly,  so  to  speak. 
The  English  government  allows  almost  everything  in  the 
drinking  line;  but  it  ungallantly  refuses  to  allow  a  woman 
with  a  baby  in  her  arms  to  line  up  at  the  bar  of  a  pub,  nor 
will  it  permit  children  under  fifteen  years  of  age  to  enter  a 
pub  for  liquid  refreshment  or  for  relaxation  and  amuse- 


280  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ment  or  for  any  other  reason.  If  a  mother  who  has  a  small 
baby  is  also  fortunate  enough  to  possess  a  baby-carriage, 
she  can — and  frequently  does — park  the  baby-carriage  out- 
side the  pub  while  she  herself  goes  in  to  hoist  a  few  scuttles 
of  suds  with  the  other  members  of  her  sewing  circle.  If 
she  does  not  own  a  baby-carriage,  she  must  hang  around 
the  door  of  the  pub  while  a  friend  goes  in  and  gets  a  great, 
big,  cold,  wet  glass  of  ale  and  brings  it  out  to  her. 

The  pubs  closed  at  three  o'clock  on  Sunday;  and  when 
three  o'clock  struck,  my  consular  companion  and  I  found 
ourselves  in  the  public  bar  of  a  pub  in  the  slums  which  lie 
just  beyond  Hyde  Park  and  the  Marble  Arch.  We  were 
with  five  English  laborers — all  of  them  undersized,  under- 
nourished and  unhealthy-looking  as  a  result  of  the  undi- 
gestible  food  and  the  oceans  of  beer  which  they  and  their 
ancestors  had  consumed — and  at  the  direction  of  the  pub 
owner  the  seven  of  us  took  our  glasses  of  Burton  and  stood 
on  the  sidewalk  outside  the  pub  in  the  pale  smoky  sunshine 
of  a  London  autumn  afternoon.  Five  feet  from  us,  as  we 
stood  and  talked  about  Prohibition  and  the  peculiarly  nasty 
taste  of  quassia  which  the  British  brewers  had  succeeded  in 
imparting  to  all  their  beer,  stood  a  woman  with  a  baby  over 
her  left  shoulder  and  an  enormous  glass  of  stout  in  her 
right  hand.  A  friend,  also  nursing  a  glass  of  stout,  stood 
beside  her;  and  while  the  fond  mother  buried  her  nose  in 
the  stout,  the  friend  cooed  and  glugged  at  the  baby,  poking 
a  tentative  finger  into  its  cheeks,  pushing  a  penny  into  its 
fat  fists,  and  breathing  warmly  on  it  with  her  stout-impreg- 
nated breath.  Beyond  this  mother  there  were  two  other 
mothers  with  babies  in  their  arms,  both  drinking  busily ;  and 
there  were  five  other  apparently  unattached  women,  all  bur- 
dened with  huge  glasses  of  beer.  The  children  of  the  neigh- 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  281 

borhood  played  among  them  joyously ;  and  altogether  it  was 
a  scene  of  great  peace  and  contentment.  When  the  beer  had 
been  consumed,  the  owner  of  the  pub  came  out  and  collected 
the  glasses,  and  the  little  gathering  slowly  dispersed. 

The  pubs,  on  the  whole,  are  infinitely  more  quiet  and 
orderly  than  similar  institutions  ever  would  have  been  in 
America.  The  drinks  in  English  pubs — except  in  the  public 
bars  of  the  poorest  pubs — are  dispensed  by  maidens  of  vari- 
ous ages;  and  their  presence  appears  to  have  a  refining  and 
chastening  influence  on  the  clientele.  I  call  them  maidens 
because  they  are  known  generically  as  "Miss."  They  neither 
understand  nor  answer  to  any  other  term  of  address.  Di- 
minutives, terms  of  endearment,  or  familiarities,  such  as 
Ducky,  Sister,  Sweetheart,  Little  Honeybunch  and  Kid,  are 
received  by  them  in  stony  and  contemptuous  silence.  If  you 
want  anything  from  them,  you  must  call  them  "Miss." 
"Two  stouts,  Miss,  Jrif  you  please!"  or  "Miss,  two  Burtons," 
are  the  phrases  that  echo  through  every  English  pub  without 
cessation.  During  crowded  hours,  the  frequent  repetition  of 
"Miss,  Miss,  Miss"  that  rings  out  on  the  beery  air  occasion- 
ally attains  the  proportions  of  the  angry  hissing  of  a  second- 
gallery  audience  at  an  unpopular  play.  In  the  larger  pubs 
the  staff  of  Misses  is  ruled  by  a  Miss  of  wide  experience  and 
mature  years.  She  is  supreme  behind  the  bar;  and  beneath 
the  bar  she  usually  maintains  a  very  large  glass.  Whenever 
a  customer  fails  to  drink  his  entire  drink,  the  residue  is 
poured  into  the  glass  of  this  duenna  of  Misses.  When  it  is 
filled,  she  repairs  to  a  spot  where  she  is  comparatively  free 
from  observation  and  drinks  it  hastily.  Usually  she  has  a 
false  front,  a  hard  yet  watery  eye,  and  a  nose  that  inclines 
toward  ruddiness  and  bulbosity.  Whenever  a  customer 
becomes  over-familiar  in  his  manner  of  addressing  one  of 


282  .WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  younger  Misses,  the  duenna  is  summoned.  She  surges 
majestically  to  the  scene  of  hostilities  and  opens  on  the 
unfortunate  offender  with  the  verbal  ammunition  which  she 
has  acquired  through  years  of  careful  attention  to  barroom 
conversation.  The  offender  usually  lasts  about  three  sec- 
onds, and  is  then  led  away  by  his  friends,  if  he  has  any 
left 

The  pubs  reopened  at  six  o'clock  on  Sunday  evening  and 
remained  open  until  nine  o'clock.  We  resumed  pubbing  at 
six  o'clock,  working  from  the  poor  district  known  as  Ele- 
phant and  Castle  out  to  the  equally  poor  district  known  as 
Camberwell  and  pronounced  Camel.  The  pubs  were 
jammed  with  people  and  there  were  no  other  sorts  of  shops 
open,  except  candy  shops  and  tobacconists.  Movies  can  be 
open  on  Sunday  evenings  also;  but  in  the  large  amount  of 
territory  which  we  covered  on  that  particular  Sunday  we 
didn't  happen  to  see  a  single  moving-picture  theater,  though 
we  passed  and  entered  scores  of  pubs.  In  every  pub  there 
were  women;  and  outside  of  almost  every  pub  there  were 
little  children  waiting  for  their  mothers  to  come  out.  At 
a  little  before  nine  o'clock  we  found  a  corner  pub  in  Cam- 
berwell with  four  entrances.  In  each  of  three  of  the  en- 
trances, on  the  cold  stone  step,  were  seated  two  little  girls; 
and  crowded  on  the  step  of  the  fourth  entrance  were  three 
little  girls.  I  spoke  to  each  one  of  the  nine  in  turn,  asking 
who  they  were  waiting  for.  The  answer  in  each  case  was 
"My  mama."  They  were  all  attractive-looking  children, 
surprisingly  well-dressed.  There  was  nothing  unusual  about 
this  incident.  You  can  run  across  such  spectacles  in  any 
section  of  any  English  city  on  any  night  in  the  year — 
except  the  nights  when  the  pubs  are  closed. 

I  have  seen  large  masses  of  working  people  in  many 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  283 

large  cities  of  America,  Asia  and  Europe;  but  I  have  never 
seen  more  universally  miserable-looking  specimens  of  hu- 
manity— such  runty,  stunted,  malformed,  buck-toothed, 
obviously  mal-nourished,  diseased  and  generally  wretched 
specimens  as  those  I  saw  among  the  lower  classes  of  Eng- 
land in  my  tours  of  the  English  public  houses.  These  people 
are  the  people  who  worship  beer.  They  are  the  working 
people ;  and  the  English  records  show  that  out  of  the  four 
hundred  and  ten  million  pounds  which  were  spent  on  intoxi- 
cating liquors  in  the  United  Kingdom  in  1919,  two  hundred 
and  seventy  million  pounds  were  spent  by  the  working 
classes.  The  climate  may  have  something  to  do  with  their 
physical  state ;  the  soggy,  vilely-cooked  food  which  they  eat 
in  such  vast  quantities  may  have  something  to  do  with  it; 
the  bad  housing  and  the  lack  of  healthful  recreation  may 
have  something  to  do  with  it ;  but  if  any  man  can  go  among 
the  Beer  Worshipers  while  they're  at  their  devotions  and  not 
blame  most  of  their  troubles  on  beer,  he  is,  to  put  it 
conservatively,  singularly  unobservant. 

The  fight  against  liquor  in  England  dates  back  to  1853, 
when  the  United  Kingdom  Alliance,  an  Association  of  Tem- 
perance and  Social  Reformers,  was  formed  in  the  city  of 
Manchester  with  the  sole  and  avowed  purpose  of  dealing  a 
deadly  wallop  to  the  Liquor  Traffic  by  means  of  public 
opinion,  working  through  Local  Option.  England,  as  I 
have  said  before,  has  no  option  in  the  matter  of  liquor. 
Licenses  to  sell  liquor  are  granted  by  licensing  justices 
appointed — frequently  for  political  party  service — by  the 
lord  chancellor.  The  people  of  a  neighborhood  in  which  a 
license  is  requested  have  no  effective  voice  in  saying  whether 
or  not  the  license  shall  be  granted. 

The  fight  of  most  of  the  Temperance  workers  of  Eng- 


284  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

land,  to-day  as  in  the  past,  is  a  fight  to  permit  the  people  of 
England  to  express  themselves  on  the  subject  of  liquor. 
The  fight  of  the  Liquor  Interests — or  of  the  Trade,  as  it  is 
always  spoken  of  more  or  less  affectionately  in  England — 
is  a  fight  to  prevent  the  people  of  England  from  expressing 
themselves. 

The  United  Kingdom  Alliance  has  been  the  father  of 
practically  all  the  Temperance  organizations  which  have 
sprung  up  in  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies.  It  was  the 
father  of  the  Scottish  Permissive  Bill  and  Temperance  Asso- 
ciation, which  succeeded  in  obtaining  Local  Option  for 
Scotland.  It  was  the  father  of  Alliances  in  Canada,  Aus- 
tralia, New  Zealand  and  South  Africa — which  places  in 
1921  had  either  gone  dry  or  were  about  to  go  dry  with 
harsh,  dusty  crashes.  In  1908  the  United  Kingdom  Alliance 
nearly  got  a  Local  Option  Bill  made  into  law.  The  Bill 
struggled  through  the  House  of  Commons  successfully;  but 
when  it  went  gaily  and  innocently  up  to  the  House  of  Lords, 
the  noble  lords — being  deeply  interested  in  breweries  and 
having  large  quantities  of  the  family  currency  or  jack 
invested  in  them — drew  long  keen  knives  from  their  boots 
and  cut  the  bill  to  shreds. 

The  United  Kingdom  Alliance  is  a  political  as  well  as 
an  educative  organization.  It  fights  the  Liquor  Trade  and 
representatives  of  the  Liquor  Trade  and  candidates  who 
sympathize  with  the  Liquor  Trade.  Then  there  are  other 
strong  organizations  which  keep  out  of  politics  and  limit 
themselves  to  putting  out  books  and  pamphlets  and  posters 
showing  the  evils  of  drink,  or  to  persuading  people  to  sign 
the  pledge.  Among  these  are  such  organizations  as  the 
National  Temperance  League,  the  Temperance  Council  of 
the  Christian  Churches — which  is  headed  by  the  Archbishop 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  285 

of  Canterbury  and  the  Archbishop  of  Westminster — the 
British  Women's  Temperance  Association,  the  Women's 
Total  Abstinence  Union,  and  many  other  active  organiza- 
tions. 

The  United  Kingdom  Alliance  has  worked  always  for 
Local  Option,  and  has  devoted  its  energies  exclusively  to 
that.  When,  during  the  war,  Great  Britain  was  adopting 
strong  measures  to  stop  waste  and  increase  the  efficiency 
of  the  nation,  another  organization  whose  efforts  were 
directed  against  the  Liquor  Trade  came  into  being.  This 
was  known  as  the  Strength  of  Britain  Movement.  In  the 
beginning  it  was  composed  of  business  men  who  recognized 
the  fearful  waste  caused  by  the  production  and  consumption 
of  intoxicants,  and  who  demanded  in  rude  and  raucous  tones 
that  the  government  stop  the  production  and  the  sale  of 
liquor  for  the  duration  of  the  war  and  for  six  months  after 
— who  demanded,  in  other  words,  that  the  strength  of 
Britain  be  conserved.  Business  men  swung  in  behind  this 
movement  in  tremendous  numbers,  and  subscribed  enough 
money  for  an  advertising  campaign.  The  first  advertise- 
ment showed  a  huge  tank  labeled  "Britain's  Strength." 
There  were  three  little  leaks  in  the  tank,  entitled  "The 
Pleasure  Motoring  Leak,"  "Coal  and  Electric  Lighting 
Leak,"  and  "The  New  Clothing  Leak."  The  government  was 
noticing  and  plugging  these  leaks.  Then  there  was  a  fourth 
enormous  leak  out  of  which  Britain's  strength  was  pouring 
in  a  mighty  flood.  That,  labeled  "The  Big  Alcohol  Leak," 
was  the  leak  which  the  government  couldn't  see  at  all.  The 
Strength  of  Britain  Movement  gave  the  Liquor  Trade  in 
England  the  greatest  fright  of  its  life,  because  its  state- 
ments were  both  true  and  unanswerable.  Incidentally,  if  its 
statements  were  true  in  1916,  they  were  equally  true  in 


286 

November  of  1920,  when  the  government  of  Great  Britain 
had  been  warned  by  Sir  George  Paish  that  unless  neces- 
sary steps  were  taken  within  the  immediate  future,  Great 
Britain  herself  would  be  in  financial  difficulties  within 
twelve  months.  In  1916  the  Strength  of  Britain  Movement 
demanded  war-time  Prohibition  from  the  government.  The 
demand  came  within  an  inch  of  being  granted.  At  the  last 
moment  Lloyd-George  refused  to  take  the  whole  step;  but 
he  consented  to  reduce  the  beer  output  by  two-thirds,  cut 
down  the  spirit  output  by  one-half,  stop  distillers  from  mak- 
ing whisky,  and  greatly  curtail  the  hours  during  which  the 
pubs  could  be  open.  As  a  result  of  this,  food  was  conserved, 
efficiency  was  increased,  and  the  number  of  convictions  for 
drunkenness  was  cut  from  one  hundred  eighty-eight  thou- 
sand in  1913  to  twenty-eight  thousand  in  1918. 

Now  a  great  many  of  the  members  of  the  Strength  of 
Britain  Movement  only  advocated  Prohibition  during  a 
period  of  national  stress.  Some  of  them  were  Beer  Wor- 
shipers, a  lot  of  them  liked  a  little  jolt  of  port  before  crawl- 
ing into  bed  at  night,  and  an  appreciable  number  said 
emphatically  that  life  was  scarcely  worth  living  in  this 
beastly  climate  unless  one  could  have  a  bit  of  a  peg  with  his 
lunch,  what?  Consequently  many  of  the  Strength  of  Britain 
people  left  the  organization  flat  on  its  back  at  the  end  of  the 
war  and  took  no  more  interest  in  Prohibition  than  they 
would  have  taken  in  a  fund  for  indigent  German  subma- 
rine captains.  The  Strength  of  Britain  Movement  grew 
weaker  and  paler  day  by  day.  Finally  a  campaign  was 
started  to  unite  the  United  Kingdom  Alliance  and  the 
Strength  of  Britain  Movement.  It  progressed  nicely  for  a 
time,  until  the  leaders  of  the  Alliance,  hearing  that  the 
Strength  of  Britain  movement  had  been  on  the  verge  of 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  287 

disbanding,  refused  to  make  any  concessions  to  the  other 
side.  It  chanced,  however,  that  there  were  one  or  two 
Scotchmen  connected  with  the  Strength  of  Britain  Move- 
ment ;  and  it  also  happened  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Move- 
ment, who  was  a  very  capable  young  man,  didn't  happen  to 
have  another  job  to  step  into.  So  the  movement  suddenly 
developed  unexpected  tenacity  of  life,  and  started  spas- 
modically off  on  the  up-grade  again.  I  mention  these  things 
not  because  I  take  pleasure  in  rattling  dry  bones  in  an 
ancient  grave,  but  because  the  rebirth  of  the  Strength  of 
Britain  Movement  marks  an  unnecessary  split  in  the  Tem- 
perance workers  of  England.  The  United  Kingdom 
Alliance  still  advocates  and  fights  for  Local  Option.  The 
Strength  of  Britain  Movement  says  that  Local  Option  is 
futile  and  hopeless  and  strongly  advocates  a  bill  which  will 
permit  a  vote  on  three  questions,  to  wit :  whether  or  not  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  spirits  shall  be  prohibited ;  whether 
or  not  the  output  of  beer  shall  be  limited  to  one-half  the 
pre-war  quantity ;  and  whether  or  not  there  shall  be  a  further 
gradual  reduction  of  the  beer  output  until  it  entirely  ceases 
at  the  end  of  five  or  seven  years. 

The  argument  of  the  Strength  of  Britain  people  is  not 
unsound.  Local  Option,  as  advocated  in  England  and  as 
in  use  in  Scotland,  allows  a  city  to  vote  on  the  liquor  ques- 
tion by  wards;  and  each  ward  is  a  unit  by  itself.  Thus,  if 
there  are  ten  wards  in  a  city,  and  nine  wards  vote  over- 
whelmingly dry  while  the  tenth  ward  votes  wet  by  a  very 
narrow  majority,  the  tenth  ward  continues  to  sell  liquor, 
though  the  total  vote  of  the  city  has  been  dry.  Conse- 
quently the  Strength  of  Britain  people  claim  that  even 
though  the  people  of  England  were  given  the  right  to  vote 
on  Local  Option,  they  would  be  fifty  years  or  more  in  get- 


288  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

ting  a  dry  England.  That  opinion  was  also  echoed  by  most 
of  the  Prohibition  leaders  in  Scotland.  "The  English  will 
never  vote  to  give  up  their  beer,"  they  said.  "They're 
soaked  in  it — sodden  with  it.  Only  a  miracle  can  make 
England  dry!"  So  the  Strength  of  Britain  people  scoff 
at  Local  Option,  and  demand  a  bill  which  will  make  it 
possible  to  return  to  the  conditions  which  existed  during 
the  war — conditions  which  cut  the  convictions  for  drunken- 
ness from  one  hundred  and  eighty-eight  thousand  to  twenty- 
eight  thousand — and  gradually  to  better  those  conditions. 

There  is  a  third  class  of  Temperance  workers  whose 
efforts  are  directed  in  still  another  channel.  These  are  the 
people  who  advocate  Nationalization  or  State  Purchase  of 
the  Liquor  Traffic.  Some  of  the  advocates  of  State  Pur- 
chase are  genuine  Temperance  enthusiasts,  and  they  believe 
implicitly  that  State  Purchase  would  be  a  stepping-stone  to 
Prohibition.  There  are  other  rooters  for  State  Purchase, 
however,  who  do  their  rooting  because  they  are  very  sure 
that  if  the  government  owned  the  Liquor  Traffic,  it  would 
need  the  money  so  badly  that  there  would  never  be  any 
decrease  in  the  amount  of  liquor  manufactured  and  conse- 
quently no  Prohibition.  Some,  indeed,  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  original  suggestion  for  State  Purchase  came  from 
the  brewers.  There  are  still  other  State  Purchase  enthu- 
siasts who  hold  their  views  because  they  belong  to  the  little 
coteries  of  serious  thinkers  that  believe  in  the  National- 
ization of  everything.  At  any  rate,  all  the  other  Temper- 
ance workers  give  the  State  Purchase  advocates  the  bird  or 
razz.  Local  Optioners  burst  into  hoarse  and  contemptuous 
guffaws  at  the  idea  of  State  Purchase;  and  some  very 
pungent  remarks  are  thrown  off  about  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  going  into  the  Liquor  Trade,  about  a  minister 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  289 

for  drink  in  the  Cabinet,  and  about  attempts  to  make  the 
State  a  minister  of  evil  to  the  people. 

These  three  classes  of  Temperance  workers,  though 
seeking  results  in  different  ways,  have  constantly  dinned  into 
the  ears  of  the  English  the  great  truths  about  the  use  of 
alcohol — that  it  impairs  the  efficiency  of  a  nation,  wastes 
the  resources  of  a  nation,  and  increases  crime,  poverty  and 
disease — and  the  thousands  of  lesser  truths  about  the  use  of 
strong  drink.  Consequently  a  good  part  of  their  work  is 
efficacious.  Until  they  unite  entirely  in  their  aims,  however, 
their  efforts  will  always  have  less  strength  than  the  efforts 
of  the  Liquor  Trade,  whose  sole  object  is  the  defeat  of  any 
movement  which  will  tend  to  decrease  the  manufacture,  sale 
or  consumption  of  beer,  wine  or  spirits. 

At  the  close  of  the  war  the  English  people  were  heartily 
sick  of  the  many  infringements  on  their  personal  liberty 
which  the  war  had  brought  about.  An  Englishman  is  a 
veritable  glutton  for  his  personal  liberty.  He  talks  about 
it  constantly  during  political  campaigns ;  and  whenever  there 
is  any  alteration  in  policemen's  uniforms  or  a  change  in  rail- 
road schedules  or  a  proposal  to  muzzle  dogs  or  any  talk  of 
increasing  the  size  of  the  grandstand  of  the  football  field  in 
the  town  of  Mushroom-under-Glass,  Herts,  he  always  views 
the  project  with  deep  suspicion  as  being  a  possible  infringe- 
ment on  his  personal  liberty.  What  the  government  did  to 
the  Englishman's  personal  liberty  during  the  war  almost 
comes  under  the  head  of  a  crime ;  so  when  the  war  ended,  all 
Englishmen  were  anxious  to  do  away  with  all  war-time 
regulations  and  restrictions.  The  manufacture  and  the  sale 
of  liquor  had  been  tampered  with  by  the  government,  and 
the  people  had  benefited  tremendously  by  the  tampering. 
Nevertheless,  the  people  wanted  to  get  back  to  a  pre-war 


290  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

basis  in  that  as  in  everything,  because  they  considered  that 
their  drinking  was  a  part  of  their  personal  liberty.  As  a 
result,  at  the  end  of  the  war,  nobody  was  paying  much 
attention  to  the  arguments  of  the  Temperance  workers,  and 
the  chances  of  Prohibition  looked  as  thin  as  boarding-house 
consomme. 

At  this  juncture  there  were  alarums  and  trumpets  with- 
out, and  Pussyfoot  Johnson  entered  from  America. 

Pussyfoot  Johnson  is  a  tall,  thick-set,  neutral-tinted  per- 
son with  a  soft  soothing  voice,  an  air  of  surprised  and  wide- 
eyed  innocence,  an  enormous  store  of  facts  of  a  nature  to 
disturb  a  supporter  of  the  Liquor  Interests,  and  a  nervous 
giggle  which  he  interjects  unexpectedly  after  ridding  him- 
self of  a  statement  particularly  damning  to  an  anti-Prohibi- 
tionist. His  name  is  as  well-known  in  some  sections  of 
America  as  is  that  of  George  Washington  or  Babe  Ruth  or 
Charles  Chaplin.  In  other  sections  it  is  hardly  known  at  all. 
In  England  there  isn't  a  town  or  a  village  or  a  tiny  ham- 
let that  doesn't  know  about  Pussyfoot  Johnson.  From  the 
chalk  cliffs  of  the  Channel  and  the  unpronounceable  coal- 
mining districts  of  Wales  up  to  the  wild  islands  off  the  coast 
of  Scotland  where  the  natives  weave  their  Harris  tweeds  in 
the  mingled  atmosphere  of  acrid  peat  reek  and  Scotch 
whisky,  the  name  of  Pussyfoot  Johnson  is  a  household  word. 
He  has  become  the  sign-manual  of  the  Temperance  forces 
and  the  living  embodiment  of  Prohibition.  When  the  Wets 
attack  the  Prohibition  movement  they  attack  it  through 
Pussyfoot  Johnson.  His  name  has  become  the  generic  term 
for  every  variety  of  Temperance  worker  and  Prohibitionist. 
A  Prohibitionist  is  a  Pussyfoot.  So  is  a  Temperance 
worker.  The  verb  "to  Pussyfoot,"  in  England  means  to 
engage  in  Prohibition  work. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  291 

Pussyfoot  Johnson  did  his  first  big-  anti-liquor  work- 
as  Chief  Special  Officer  of  the  United  States  Indian  Ser- 
vice, charged  with  suppressing  the  illegal  selling  of  liquor 
to  the  Indians  on  Indian  Reservations.  He  was  a  game 
fighter  and  a  two-fisted  fighter  and  a  gun-fighter  to  boot 
when  the  occasion  demanded  it.  He  got  his  nickname  from 
the  silent  manner  in  which  he  would  gumshoe  from  place  to 
place  and  then  drop  like  a  ton  of  lead-pipe  on  the  unsus- 
pecting head  of  a  law-breaker.  The  stories  of  some  of  his 
fist-fights  and  gun  fights  in  New  Mexico,  Oklahoma,  Utah 
and  Minnesota  are  of  the  type  to  make  the  fiction  of  Old 
Sleuth  and  Old  King  Brady  sound  as  innocuous  as  the 
Flaxie  Frizzle  books.  Soon  after  he  left  the  Indian  Service 
in  1911  he  became  the  Managing  Editor  of  the  American 
Issue  Publications,  which  are  the  publications  of  the  Anti- 
Saloon  League  of  America,  He  visited  Russia  and  wrote 
the  best  existing  account  of  the  Vodka  monopoly,  and  in 
other  ways  made  his  name  known  in  Europe  as  a  highly 
successful  Temperance  worker. 

In  the  summer  of  1918,  when  Prohibition  in  America 
was  almost  as  sure  as  death  and  taxes,  the  Prohibition  forces 
in  Scotland  wrote  to  Johnson  and  asked  him  to  assist  in  the 
Scottish  Local  Option  campaign.  He  at  first  refused. 
Then,  later  in  1918,  the  Anti-Saloon  League  of  America, 
looking  around  for  more  wetness  to  conquer,  conceived  the 
idea  that  the  time  was  nearly  ripe  for  starting  an  interna- 
tional society  to  war  against  the  Liquor  Traffic.  It  was 
further  determined  to  send  Johnson  over  to  England  to  see 
whether  England  offered  fertile  ground  for  the  planting  of 
an  international  Dry  seed;  so  Johnson  decided  to  strangle 
two  Wet  birds  with  one  sponge,  as  one  might  say — help  the 
Scotchmen  and  look  into  the  prospects  for  the  International 


292  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Prohibition  Society.  The  Anti-Saloon  League  of  America 
paid  Johnson's  salary;  the  Scottish  Permissive  Bill  and  Tem- 
perance Association  paid  his  expenses.  Neither  his  salary 
nor  his  expenses  were  particularly  large,  in  spite  of  the 
claims  of  the  Liquor  Trade  that  the  "American  Agitators" 
were  paid  "fabulous  sums." 

So  Johnson  for  three  months  helped  the  Scotchmen  by 
making  speeches  which  told  the  good  things  that  Prohibition 
had  done  for  America.  Then  he  went  down  to  London  and 
started  work  on  his  international  society.  The  Drys,  he 
said,  snapped  at  it;  and  the  result  was  the  World  League 
against  Alcoholism.  Johnson  is  a  sort  of  press  agent  and 
special  investigator  for  this  organization.  He  has  an  office 
in  the  heart  of  Fleet  Street,  which  is  the  big  newspaper 
street  of  London ;  and  the  inscription  on  the  big  plate-glass 
window,  at  the  level  of  the  second  story  of  the  passing 
double-decked  busses,  reads  "American  Issue  Publishing 
Company."  The  American  Issue  Publishing  Company, 
remember,  is  a  subsidiary  Company  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League  of  America. 

Shortly  after  Pussyfoot  Johnson's  arrival  in  London  in 
1919,  a  representative  of  The  London  Daily  Mail  saw  him 
and  wrote  a  long  interview  in  which  Pussyfoot  was  quoted 
as  saying  that  the  Anti-Saloon  League  proposed  to  take  an 
active  part  in  British  elections  and  show  the  British  Temper- 
ance organizations  how  to  make  the  country  dry.  Johnson 
assured  me  that  he  was  misquoted  in  that  interview  and 
that  he  said  no  such  thing.  I  asked  him  whether  he  had 
remonstrated  with  the  reporter  who  wrote  it,  and  he  said 
that  he  had  not.  He  did,  however,  get  a  long  interview  into 
The  Manchester  Guardian  soon  afterward,  explaining  care- 
fully and  at  great  length  that  neither  he  nor  the  Anti-Saloon 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  293 

League  had  ever  had  the  slightest  intention  of  interfering 
in  any  way  with  British  affairs,  and  that  they  intended  to 
take  no  part  whatever  in  any  British  elections. 

Whether  he  said  what  The  Mail  said  he  said,  or  whether 
he  didn't,  the  harm  had  been  done.  The  interview  raised  a 
hue  and  cry  which  broke  all  records  for  hue-and-cry  raising. 
The  hue  was  raised  about  three  miles  higher  than  a  hue  had 
ever  before  been  raised,  while  the  cry  was  raised  so  high 
that  it  hasn't  come  down  yet.  There  were  passionate  howls 
to  the  effect  that  America  was  sending  an  army  of  workers 
and  millions  of  dollars  to  England  to  interfere  with  the  per- 
sonal liberty  of  the  British  people.  There  was  a  violent  con- 
centration of  public  interest  in  the  Prohibition  question. 
The  name  of  Pussyfoot  was  feverishly  hated  on  every  side. 
Pussyfoot  made  speeches  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
and  was  greeted  with  what  the  less  refined  elements  of 
English  society  know  as  the  bird,  and  what  corresponding 
elements  in  America  delight  to  term  the  razz.  Finally  at  a 
Prohibition  debate  in  London,  some  University  of  London 
students,  by  way  of  a  jolly  little  undergraduate  prank, 
started  a  riot  against  Pussyfoot.  The  riot  spread  and 
became  unmanageable.  Police  reserves  were  called  out; 
and  just  as  the  reserves  were  about  to  rescue  Johnson,  some 
one  threw  a  rock  which  put  out  his  right  eye.  Johnson  is, 
and  always  has  been,  a  game  fighter.  He  suffered  intense 
pain  for  many  days,  but  never  had  a  word  of  blame  for  any 
one.  An  evening  paper  started  a  popular  subscription  for 
him,  and  Johnson  asked  that  the  money  be  turned  over  to 
St.  Dunstan's  Hospital  for  blinded  soldiers.  There  was  a 
great  revulsion  of  sentiment  in-  his-  favor. 

The  interest  in  Prohibition  continued  to  grow,  and  the 
Liquor  Interests  in  England  began  to  be  more  and  more 


294  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

worried.  The  definite  arrival  of  Prohibition  in  America 
afflicted  them  with  some  extremely  poignant  pains.  The 
rumbles  of  the  Local  Option  campaign  in  Scotland  were 
distinctly  audible  in  England,  and  added  appreciably  to  the 
spiritual  unrest  of  the  Wet  element.  The  evident  success 
of  Prohibition  in  America  put  an  enormous  amount  of 
valuable  anti-drink  propaganda  into  the  hands  of  the  United 
Kingdom  Alliance,  the  Strength  of  Britain  Movement  and 
all  the  other  British  Temperance  organizations.  Most 
important  of  all,  influential  British  business  interests  began 
to  get  firmly  fixed  in  their  heads — which  are  slow  to  get  a 
new  idea  and  very  reluctant  to  let  go  of  an  idea  which  has 
once  been  grasped — the  idea  that  a  Wet  England  can  not 
compete  with  a  Dry  America. 

It  thus  became  the  duty  of  the  higher  Interests  to  con- 
vince the  people  of  England  that  Prohibition  would  be  a 
very  bad  thing  for  them,  and  that  their  general  health,  pros- 
perity and  well-being  would  be  promoted  by  a  continued 
indulgence  in  liquor.  Their  chief  method  of  doing  this 
was  to  attack  violently  the  interference  of  America  in 
British  affairs,  to  hint  darkly  that  vast  quantities  of  money 
were  being  poured  into  England  by  American  Prohibition- 
ists for  some  presumably  ulterior  motive,  and  generally  to 
imply  that  the  people  of  England  should  fight  Prohibition 
because  it  was  a  foreign  movement  which  was  striking  at 
their  sacred  liberty. 

One  of  the  first  and  most  widely  circulated  posters 
which  the  Wet  Interests  got  out  was  a  crude  affair  headed 
"Pussyfoot  Nosey  Parker  from  Across  the  Sea,"  It  showed 
a  funereal-looking  person  standing  on  the  shores  of  the 
United  States.  His  tremendously  long  nose  stretched  all 
the  way  across  the  Atlantic  and  was  thrust  neatly  into  a 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  295 

house  labeled  "John  Bull :  Private."  On  his  head  he  wore 
a  Stars  and  Stripes  hat,  and  in  his  hand  he  carried  a  valise 
labeled  "Dollars  for  Dirty  Work  in  England." 

On  thousands  of  bill-boards  throughout  England  in  the 
autumn  of  1920  there  appeared  a  poster  showing  a  large 
John  Bull  holding  up  a  glass  of  beer  in  one  hand  and  pluck- 
ing a  diminutive  Uncle  Sam  out  of  the  beer  with  the  thumb 
and  forefinger  of  his  other  hand.  "Lor*  lumme!"  John 
Bull  was  exclaiming,  "there's  a  microbe  in  my  beer!"  The 
principal  Liquor  organizations,  when  I  attempted  to  get 
copies  of  this  poster,  denied  any  definite  knowledge  of  its 
source.  They  said  that  the  poster  had  been  originated  and 
posted  by  an  obscure  organization  of  brewers,  and  that  it 
had  been  ordered  down  by  the  Liquor  people  as  likely  to 
cause  ill-feeling  between  the  English  and  American  people. 

A  small  pink  hand-bill  put  out  by  the  Liquor  people  made 
some  very  mysterious  insinuations  which  were  doubtless 
intended  to  bring  a  hot  flush  of  shame  to  American  cheeks 
and  to  convince  Englishmen  beyond  cavil  that  the  Prohibi- 
tion movement  is  one  of  singularly  sinister  import. 

"What  is  the  game  ?"  asks  this  hand-bill  without  circum- 
locution. "Do  the  Yankee  Prohibitionists  want  to  provoke 
a  revolution  in  Britain?"  There,  indeed,  is  a  question  cal- 
culated to  make  any  Englishman  upset  his  beer  in  consterna- 
tion. "Results  of  shortage  of  beer  and  spirits:"  continues 
this  valuable  document.  "During  the  war  there  was  a  great 
shortage  of  beer  and  spirits,  and  the  Home  Secretary,  Sir 
George  (now  Lord)  Cave,  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  it  had  led  to  unrest,  discontent,  loss  of  time,  loss  of 
work,  and  in  some  cases  even  strikes  were  threatened,  and 
indeed  caused,  by  the  very  fact  that  there  was  a  shortage  of 
beer.  These  are  serious  facts." 


296  [WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Serious,  maybe ;  but  wait  until  you  read  further. 

"What,"  asks  this  Pink  Paper,  "what  is  the  game  of  the 
Yankee?  In  many  parts  of  the  country  active  disturbances 
took  place.  That  was  due  to  shortage  in  war-time.  What 
would  be  the  position  if,  in  the  piping  days  of  peace,  well- 
organized  teetotalers  were  to  jockey  the  nation  into  seizing 
the  supply  altogether?  Many  thoughtful  men  believe  it 
tvould  spell  revolution. 

"Can  it  be  in  the  interests  of  some  Americans  to  foment 
a  great  upheaval  of  trade  in  the  United  Kingdom  ?  Scrutiny 
of  the  list  of  subscribers  to  the  huge  cost  of  this  campaign 
of  interference  in  the  every-day  life  of  another  nation  might 
supply  the  answer. 

Is  it  to  ruin  our  industries?  The  American  speakers 
are  preaching  the  doctrine  that  if  the  Briton  will  give  up  his 
liquor  greater  efficiency  will  be  secured.  We  seem  to 
remember  that  the  abolition  of  vodka  in  Russia  had  a  very 
different  result,  and  during  the  war  the  shortage  of  liquor 
was  the  main  cause  of  great  industrial  unrest.  The  Home 
Secretary  admitted  it. 

"Do  strikes,  loss  of  work,  loss  of  time,  unrest,  and  a  gen- 
eral feeling  of  discontent  lead  to  efficiency? 

"But  isn't  it,  to  say  the  least,  a  strange  thing  that  Ameri- 
can manufacturers,  who  contribute  so  large  a  part  of  the 
funds  for  this  invasion,  should  be  so  anxious  that  our  effi- 
ciency be  improved  so  that  we  may  be  better  able  to  compete 
with  them,  for  the  world's  trade?  We  had  never  before 
regarded  them  as  so  altruistic. 

"What  is  the  little  game?    Think  it  over." 

For  one  hundred  per  cent,  piffleism,  this  gem  of  Wet 
thought  would  be  difficult  to  beat.  None  the  less,  it  goes 
big  with  the  sturdy  Briton  when,  with  four  or  five  glasses 
of  stout  swashing  around  in  him,  he  gives  it  the  benefit  of 
his  undivided  attention. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  297 

I  procured  a  set  of  anti-Prohibition  pamphlets  at  Na- 
tional Trade  Defense  Headquarters — the  organization  which 
looks  after  the  interests  of  the  entire  Liquor  Trade.  These 
pamphlets  usually  depict  a  clear-eyed,  perfectly  proportioned, 
nicely  dressed  British  working  man  or  working  woman  in 
close  juxtaposition  to  a  bottle  of  ale,  engaged  in  an  alterca- 
tion with  a  cadaverous-looking,  frock-coated,  gloomy-faced 
Temperance  worker.  The  pamphlets  assure  the  honest  Brit- 
ish working  man  that  the  Prohibitionists  are,  among  other 
things,  sour-visaged,  jaundiced  old  ladies  of  both  sexes, 
fussy  zealots,  professional  propagandists,  fanatics  and  artful 
dodgers.  Pamphet  No.  13  declares: 

"It  is  just  at  this  time  that  a  horde  of  Yankee  merce- 
naries have  come  over  to  assist  our  sour-visaged  Prohibition- 
ists to  make  the  United  Kingdom  'bone-dry.'  They  propose 

to  do  it  by  stages — Local  Veto  is  to  be  one Make  no 

mistake.  Local  Veto  is  the  first  step  toward  prohibition — 
as  it  was  in  America — and  should  be  resisted  now  if  you 
want  to  avoid  wide-spread  poverty.  There  are  employed  in 
and  dependent  on  the  liquor  trade,  and  trades  dependent 
upon  it,  about  1,000,000  persons.  If  you  allow  anti-drink 
fanatics  to  have  their  way,  you  will  rob  that  vast  army  of 
their  living.  Imagine  the  competition  there  would  be  for 
jobs!  Can  it  be  doubted  that  the  result  would  be  a  large 
and  general  decline  in  wages?  Don't  sell  yourselves  into 
slavery  at  the  dictation  of  jaundiced  teetotalers.  Preserve 
your  freedom  and  self-respect.  Vote  against  Local  Veto — 
the  first  step  that  would  put  you  on  the  slippery  slope  to 
Prohibition.  Write  to  your  M.  P.  and  tell  him  that  if  he 
supports  Local  Veto,  you  won't  support  him." 

The  Wets  insist  continually  that  the  people  of  England 
can  not  preserve  their  freedom  and  their  self-respect  if  the 
country  goes  dry.  Their  reasons  for  this  statement  are 


298  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

somewhat  obscure,  but  the  sturdy  Briton  who  worships  his 
beer  wastes  very  little  time  asking  for  reasons. 

Another  favorite  argument  of  the  Wet  pamphlets  is  that 
which  begs  the  voter  to  consider  the  analogy  between  prohib- 
iting drink  because  a  few  get  drunk,  and  prohibiting  shoes 
because  some  are  too  tight — or  similar  instances. 

"What  would  you  think,"  virtuously  asks  pamphlet  No. 
27,  addressed  particularly  to  working  women,  "if  a  silly 
man  said :  'Some  women  squander  a  hundred  pounds  on  a 
dress;  the  remedy  is  for  all  women  to  go  without'?  That 

is  what  teetotalers  say  about  drink If  you  let  these 

busybodies  have  their  way,  the  next  move  will  be  against 
your  tea,  or  your  husband's  tobacco — as  in  America." 

This  same  pamphlet  assures  the  working  woman  that 
the  Prohibitionists  "have  huge  sums  of  money  which  they 
are  spending  to  bring  about  Prohibition"  and  states  that 
"these  people  have  now  got  the  help  of  scores  of  Yankees — • 
highly-paid  agitators — who  have  come  over  with  unlimited 
funds  to  interfere  in  a  matter  that  does  not  concern  them. 
Teetotal  fanatics  pour  out  an  endless  stream  of  half-truths 
and  'downright  lies' " 

I  collected  a  handful  of  anti-Prohibition  pamphlets  issued 
by  the  National  Trade  Defense  people,  and  not  one  of  them 
has  recourse  to  statistics  that  tend  to  disprove  any  of  the 
countless  charges  against  drink  which  the  Prohibitionists 
have  made.  All  of  them  appeal  to  class-hatred  or  use  argu- 
ments which  only  seem  to  bear  on  the  subject. 

Here,  for  example,  is  pamphlet  No.  19. 

"Doctors  by  the  score  warn  us  that  excessive  tea-drink- 
ing is  more  harmful  than  excessive  use  of  excisable  bever- 
ages. Are  we  to  have  polls  on  the  question  of  prohibiting 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  299 

the  importation  and  use  of  tea?  Milk  is  the  most  deadly 
beverage  known.  Tuberculosis,  typhoid  fever  and  scarla- 
tina are  milk  diseases.  Are  we  to  poll  in  every  parish  on  the 
question  of  prohibiting  milk,  or  reducing  the  number  of 
dairymen's  shops?  Thousands  are  slaves  to  drugs — par- 
ticularly since  whisky  became  so  scarce.  Is  the  remedy  to  be 
found  in  polls  on  the  question  of  closing  chemists'  shops? 
Thousands  smoke  to  excess,  and  do  themselves  much  harm 
thereby.  Must  we  poll  on  the  question  of  prohibiting  the 
use  of  tobacco?  Absurd!  you  will  say.  So  it  is.  But  it  is 
the  same  plan  that  is  proposed  by  teetotal  faddists." 

Such  stuff  is,  of  course,  a  particularly  rich  specimen  of 
drivel.  If  a  country  prohibits  the  carrying  of  concealed 
weapons  because  there  are  too  many  murders,  it  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that  that  country  will  attempt  to  abolish 
the  ocean  because  a  man  was  drowned  in  it 

The  statements  of  the  Wet  interests  in  England  arc 
extremely  inaccurate,  and  are  frequently  put  out  with  the 
evident  intention  of  misleading  the  people  of  England  in 
regard  to  the  results  of  Prohibition  in  America.  One  of 
the  best-known  distillers  in  the  United  Kingdom  took  full- 
page  advertisements  in  the  English  magazines  in  the  late 
summer  of  1920.  "Prohibition  in  America,"  said  this  adver- 
tisement, "is  the  rankest  hypocrisy.  This  Company  is  con- 
stantly asked  to  send  whisky  to  America,  but  it  refuses 
because  it  will  not  deal  with  hypocrites."  Sir  Andrew 
Walker,  another  very  large  distiller,  recently  made  the 
statement  that  "he  was  unable  at  present  to  supply  the 
American  demand."  During  the  first  week  in  November 
the  manager  of  one  of  the  largest  distilleries  in  the  United 
Kingdom — the  same  one,  by  the  way,  that  refused  to  deal 
with  hypocrites — stated  that  he  was  shipping  one  thousand 
gallons  of  whisky  to  the  United  States  each  week,  and  that 


300  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

the  total  shipment  of  whisky  from  the  United  Kingdom  to 
America  was  larger  than  it  had  been  before  Prohibition  took 
effect.  Statements  similar  to  this  have  been  given  to  the 
English  press  by  the  Liquor  Interests  throughout  1920.  I 
checked  the  figures  for  the  exportation  of  spirits  from  the 
United  Kingdom  to  the  United  States,  just  out  of  curiosity. 
I  checked  them  from  the  British  government  figures,  and 
from  the  figures1  at  the  American  consulate-general — for  no 
liquor  shipments  over  one  hundred  dollars  in  value  can  be 
made  to  America  without  an  American  consular  invoice. 
Both  the  British  and  American  figures  showed  that  a  matter 
of  thirty-five  thousand  gallons  of  spirits  had  been  shipped  to 
America  from  the  United  Kingdom  during  the  first  nine 
months  of  1920,  and  that  one  million  two  hundred  and  thir- 
ty-nine thousand  seven  hundred  and  fifty  proof  gallons  had 
been  shipped  in  1916.  Mr.  Robert  P.  Skinner,  the  American 
Consul-General  in  London,  laughed  at  the  statement  that 
more  whisky  was  being  shipped  to  America  than  before 
Prohibition  took  effect.  "Our  consular  figures  are  correct," 
said  he,  "and  the  statements  of  the  whisky  people  are  foolish, 
because  when  they  make  their  figures  larger  than  ours  they 
presuppose  an  impossible  chain  of  illegality.  They  presup- 
pose illegality  on  the  part  of  the  shipper,  the  buyer,  the 
British  bonded  warehouse  people,  the  customs  officials  and 
the  bank  which  gives  the  seller  the  money  for  his  shipment 
on  presentation  of  the  consular  invoice.  One  or  two  or  three 
men  in  a  chain  might  be  crooked  enough  to  make  our  figures 
worthless,  but  when  you  work  the  number  up  to  fifteen  or 
twenty  and  include  bank  employees  and  customs  officials, 
you're  getting  beyond  the  bounds  of  probability."* 


*The  Scotch  distilleries  ship  to  Canada,  and  the  Canadian  dealers 
and  bootleggers,  working  with  the  American  dealers  and  bootleggers, 
jnost  of  whom  are  foreign-born,  re-ship  the  whisky  into  the  United 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  301 

Every  melancholy  incident  which  can  be  connected  with 
America  and  Prohibition  is  eagerly  seized  by  the  Wets  and 
circulated  quickly  throughout  England.  The  English  are 
told  that  America  is  turning  to  new  forms  of  intoxicants 
which  destroy  the  reason  and  the  stomach-lining  at  one 
fell  swoop.  Doctors,  they  are  told,  spend  all  of  their  wak- 
ing-hours writing  drug-prescriptions  for  those  who  are 
obliged  to  satisfy  their  wild  appetites  for  stimulants.  One 
London  paper  recently  published  a  story  to  the  effect  that 
three  New  York  physicians  wrote  one  and  one-half  million 
prescriptions  for  drug  addicts  within  a  period  of  six  months. 
This  statement  provoked  loud  cries  of  delight  in  Wet  circles 
until  some  skeptical  soul  pulled  out  his  pencil  and  figured 
that  three  physicians,  to  write  one  and  one-half  million 
prescriptions,  would  have  had  to  work  twenty- four  hours  a 
day,  Sundays  included,  for  six  months.  Prohibition  has 
done  some  strange  things,  but  it  hasn't  yet  made  it  possible 
for  physicians  to  go  without  sleep  for  six  months. 

The  Englishman  believes  that  every  American  home  is 
equipped  nowadays  with  hot  and  cold  water,  a  private  still, 
electric  lights  and  a  miniature  brewery.  The  English  are 
assured  that  America  is  troubled  with  furious  strikes  on  the 
part  of  men  deprived  of  their  beer,  and  that  her  citizens  are 
frightfully  unhappy  and  morose  because  of  their  beerless 
state.  Great  emphasis  is  laid  on  the  report  that  America 
went  dry  because  the  dry  legislation  took  place  unknown  to 
the  people.  Ancient  stories  are  disinterred,  and  dead  bones 
are  rattled  feverishly.  Visiting  Americans  are  questioned 
closely  regarding  the  results  of  Prohibition ;  and  usually  each 

States.  When  the  Scotch  distilleries  ship  "to  America,"  they  arc 
actually  shipping  to  Canada  (or  the  West  Indies)  and  knowingly  con- 
niving at  breaking  the  American  laws. 


302  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

visiting1  American  drains  his  cocktail  glass  with  evident 
enjoyment  and  says,  "My  boy,  Prohibition  is  a  great  thing! 
I  never  believed  that  they  could  slip  it  over  on  us;  and  I 
wouldn't  have  voted  for  it  for  five  dollars;  but  it's  done 
now  and,  believe  me,  it's  great  stuff!  I'm  for  it;  and  if  I 
ever  had  another  chance  to  vote  for  it,  I'd  vote  the  Prohibi- 
tion ticket  straight.  Yes,  sir!  George,  bring  us  a  couple 
more  of  those  cocktails  and  just  spear  that  cherry  with  a 
toothpick,  will  you?"  Then  the  Englishman  who  is  ques- 
tioning him  shakes  his  head  in  a  dumb,  puzzled  way  and 
decides  ponderously  and  irrevocably,  after  the  British  fash- 
ion, that  the  American  is  a  liar  and  a  hypocrite. 

The  Wets  defend  themselves  chiefly  by  attacking  Pussy- 
foot Johnson  and  stirring  the  working  man  to  vote  against 
the  American  invader.  Pussyfoot  Johnson  is  a  good  fighter 
and  an  agreeable  man;  but  his  presence  in  England  is  the 
best  anti-Prohibition  argument  in  the  Wets'  bag,  and  a  con- 
stant irritant  to  the  British.  The  average  Britisher  thinks 
that  Johnson  was  sent  to  England  by  the  American  nation 
to  interfere  with  England's  affairs.  He  doesn't  know  that 
Johnson  is  employed  by  the  Anti-Saloon  League — and  that 
the  Anti-Saloon  League  is  scarcely  regarded  as  a  govern- 
ment organization  in  America — and  that  he  came  to  Great 
Britain  at  the  invitation  of  Britons.  The  Wet  interests 
encourage  the  average  Britisher's  erroneous  beliefs.  Most 
of  the  English  Prohibitionists,  for  that  matter,  resent  John- 
son's presence  and  think  that  the  Anti-Saloon  League  would 
be  wiser  to  keep  him  at  home.  Most  Americans  would  think 
so,  too,  if  they  knew  the  irritation  which  has  been  stirred 
up  against  Johnson  and  America  by  the  anti-Prohibitionists. 
On  Guy  Fawkes  day — November  fifth — each  year  the  Eng- 
lish children  burn  Guy  Fawkes  in  effigy  for  his  Gunpowder 


THE  SLAVERY  BELL. 


Teetotal  FanaHc-"Walrh  me  ring 
hheBell,BroHierf 

BriHsh Workman  "I  DONTTHINK!" 


As  the  workman  is  supposed  to  sec  it 


ONE  DEATH 

FROM  ALCOHOL 

EVERY  EIGHT  MINUTES 


Drink  is  one  Cause  of  Not  Less  Than 

60,000  Deaths  Every  Year  in  the 

United  Kingdom. 

DO  NOT  LET  US  GO  BACK  TO 
PRE-WAR    CONDITIONS. 

Advocating  the  status  quo 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  303 

Plot  against  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  During  the  last  few 
years,  however,  many  of  them  found  Guy  Fawkes  too  tame, 
and  started  burning  more  concrete  enemies  of  England. 
During  the  war,  they  burned  the  Kaiser.  In  1919  they 
burned  Lenine  or  Trotsky.  On  November  5,  1920,  large 
numbers  of  them  burned  Pussyfoot  Johnson  in  effigy. 

The  Temperance  workers  of  England  are  confronted  by 
a  political  situation  which  would  make  even  a  Pollyanna 
burst  into  tears  and  kick  the  shins  of  any  one  who  could 
find  any  gladness  in  it.  In  order  to  get  Local  Option,  which 
is  the  measure  for  which  the  majority  of  the  Temperance 
workers  yearn,  the  Temperance  workers  must  get  through 
Parliament  a  bill  which  permits  the  people  of  England  to 
vote  on  the  liquor  question. 

The  present  Parliament,  however,  is  very  kindly  disposed 
toward  strong  drink.  There  are  a  couple  of  bars  in  the 
House  of  Parliament,  and  the  members  go  in  keenly  for 
their  grog.  One  of  the  most  conservative  of  the  Temperance 
leaders  assured  me  mournfully  that  the  present  Parliament 
lapped  up  more  liquor  than  any  Parliament  in  history.  It 
is  a  Coalition  Parliament,  and  the  Coalition  whip  or  boss 
is  Sir  George  Younger,  owner  of  Younger's  Scotch  Ale. 
In  addition  to  Sir  George  Younger,  there  are  twenty-seven 
other  members  of  Parliament  directly  connected  with  the 
Liquor  Trade,  either  as  distillers,  brewers  or  sellers.  The 
introduction  before  these  gentlemen  and  their  colleagues  of 
a  bill  aimed  to  remove  the  brew  from  the  breweries  and  the 
still  from  the  distilleries  would  leave  them  more  or  less 
cold.  It  would,  unquestionably,  cause  them  to  burst  into 
hoarse,  blood-curdling  peals  of  English  merriment  and  to 
destroy  utterly  the  features  of  the  bill  before  it  left  their 
presence.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  the  present  prime  minister, 


304 

is  personally  in  favor  of  Prohibition;  but  ministerially  he 
refuses  to  be  either  for  or  against  it.  As  an  individual  he 
made  the  statement  early  in  1920  that  if  America  kept  dry 
for  ten  years,  England  would  have  to  go  dry  as  well  because 
England  could  not  afford  to  give  America  the  benefit  of  the 
ten  per  cent,  advantage  in  efficiency  which  Prohibition 
would  bring.  As  prime  minister  he  will  not  commit  him- 
self. If  he  did,  Sir  George  Younger,  the  Coalition  Whip, 
would — according  to  the  dope  dispensed  by  both  the  Wets 
and  the  Drys — round  up  his  gang  and  leap  gaily  on  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  leaving  him  bruised  and  jobless  on  the  cold 
pavement. 

In  short,  the  Temperance  people  don't  dare  to  ask  any- 
thing of  the  present  Parliament  for  fear  that  they  may  get 
something  which  they  don't  want — a  Local  Option  bill,  say, 
which  would  permit  them  to  start  voting  in  the  year  2020, 
and  oblige  the  Temperance  people  to  poll  seventy-five  per 
cent,  of  the  registered  votes  in  order  to  obtain  any  success. 
Consequently  they  are  devoting  all  their  efforts  to  educating 
the  voters  so  that  when  the  next  Parliament  is  elected  in  six 
months,  or  a  year,  or  two  years,  it  may  contain  men  who 
are  more  favorably  disposed  toward  the  suppression  of  the 
Liquor  Traffic. 

The  Temperance  people  have  put  out  a  large  amount  of 
excellent  propaganda  since  America  went  dry;  but  oddly 
enough  the  most  striking  and  useful  piece  of  anti-drink  prop- 
aganda has  just  been  published  by  the  Board  of  Education 
at  the  government's  expense.  This  is  called  The  Hygiene  of 
Food  and  Drink;  a  Syllabus  of  Lessons  for  Use  in  Schools, 
and  Notes  for  the  Assistance  of  Teachers.  It  is  published 
by  His  Majesty's  Stationery  Office  in  London,  is  distributed 
free  to  schools,  and  may  be  purchased  for  two  pence.  What 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  305 

this  pamphlet  does  to  old  John  L.  Barleycorn  is  little  short 
of  criminal.  It  goes  into  the  matter  deeply  in  a  cold, 
detached,  unemotional  British  way  and  proceeds  to  show 
with  great  vigor,  eclat,  elan  and  bluntness  that  alcoholic 
beverages  result  in  (a)  uncritical  self-satisfaction  of  the 
individual  with  his  words  and  actions;  (b)  disregard  of 
occurrences  and  conditions  normally  requiring  caution  of 
word  and  act;  (c)  trespass  of  rules  and  conventions  pre- 
viously respected;  (d)  impaired  appreciation  of  the  passage 
of  time;  (e)  talkativeness;  and  (f)  an  argumentative  state 
of  mind ;  quarrelsomeness.  One  might  think,  if  he  were  a 
careless  thinker,  that  alcoholic  drinks,  outside  of  these  few 
bad  features,  were  all  right;  but  the  pamphlet  proceeds  to 
show  that  their  use  weakens  the  heart  and  the  body,  dimin- 
ishes the  power  and  capacity  to  work,  lowers  the  resistance 
of  the  body  to  disease,  causes  under-nourishment,  causes  loss 
of  bodily  heat  in  cold  weather  and  predisposes  to  sunstroke 
in  hot  weather. 

Having  thus  warmed  gradually  to  its  subject,  the  pam- 
phlet figurativety  removes  its  coat  and  vest,  rolls  up  its 
sleeves  and — as  the  saying  goes — hops  to  it.  The  United 
States  is  a  Prohibition  country ;  and  in  presenting  the  argu- 
ments of  the  Board  of  Education  my  intention  is  not  to 
discourage  home  brewers  in  their  pleasant  pursuits  or  to 
wean  the  perfumery-drinker  from  his  secret  vice,  but  to 
show  that  though  the  working  classes  of  England  may  be 
Beer  Worshipers,  the  children  of  the  Beer  Worshipers  are 
being  educated  to  follow  other  gods. 

"The  man  who  drinks  to  excess,"  says  this  plain-spoken 
government  document,  "even  if  he  is  never  intoxicated, 
degenerates  in  character  and  capacity.  He  becomes  unfit 
to  work,  and  in  many  cases  unemployable.  Diligence  and 


3o6  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

application  become  distasteful  to  him.  Ill-health,  and  not 
infrequently  disease,  follows  such  excess,  and  he  becomes 
pauperized  and  even  a  burden  on  his  family,  and  to  the  State. 
Even  moderate  drinking  may,  in  certain  circumstances, 
impair  the  full  development  of  a  man's  mental  capacity. 
Thus  the  drinker  may  suffer  socially,  physically,  mentally 
and  morally.  Further,  a  person  who  is  intemperate  in  one 
way  is  likely  to  be  intemperate  in  other  ways ;  the  loss  of 
self-control  in  one  respect  indicates  a  predisposition  to  moral 
weakness  in  other  directions  also.  Sexual  immorality  is 
often  dependent  on  alcoholic  intemperance.  Moreover,  a 
person  who  takes  too  much  alcohol  becomes  unfit  for  a  good 
day's  work,  and  is  among  the  first  to  be  discharged  when 
employment  slackens.  Intemperance,  therefore,  leads  to 
pauperism.  The  association  of  alcoholic  excess  with  crime 
is  well  known ;  the  effects  produced  in  the  home  and  family 
life  are  disastrous. 

"The  children  of  drunken  parents  start  life  with  many 
disadvantages.  With  their  physical  health  and  energy  below 
the  average,  they  lack  the  care,  nourishment  and  protection 
which  all  children  require  if  they  are  to  grow  up  well  and 
strong;  they  are  accustomed  to  squalor,  poverty,  and  a  low 
standard  of  comfort,  and  therefore  often  have  no  desire  or 
ambition  to  aspire  to  better  things,  and,  being  thus  badly 
equipped  from  the  outset  both  in  mind  and  body,  their 
chances  of  leading  happy  and  useful  lives  are  greatly  les- 
sened  

"The  evils  of  drinking  too  much  are  not  limited  to  the 
man  himself  and  his  family.  He  may  also  influence  others 
to  follow  his  bad  example,  and  the  harm  done  by  one  man 
may  thus  be  wide-spread.  One  degraded  or  ill-conducted 
worker  will  demoralize  a  whole  family ;  one  disorderly  fam- 
ily inexplicably  lowers  the  conduct  of  a  whole  street;  the 
low-caste  life  of  a  single  street  spreads  its  evil  influence 

over  the  entire  quarter;  and  the  slum  quarter subtly 

deteriorates  the  standard  of  health,  morality  and  public  spirit 
of  the  whole  city. 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  307 

"We  must  therefore  consider  the  effects  of  intemperate 
habits  on  the  nation  as  well  as  on  the  individual.  Money 
spent  by  the  nation  on  drink  must  be  reckoned  as  money 
which  is  largely  wasted,  because  there  is  no  proper  return 
for  it.  The  expenditure  of  four  hundred  million  pounds  or 
more  in  a  year  is  a  drain  on  the  resources  of  the  nation  and 
the  direct  cause  of  not  a  little  national  poverty. 

"While  these  facts  demonstrate  the  grave  evils  which 
may  arise  from  the  drinking  of  alcoholic  beverages  to  excess 
— and  it  must  be  remembered  that  unsober  nations  have  to 
compete  with  sober  nations — they  do  not  prove  that  the 
moderate  use  of  such  articles  always  does  harm,  though  it 
is  obvious  that  for  many  persons  the  only  certain  way  of 
avoiding  all  risk  is  to  abstain  altogether  from  the  consump- 
tion of  alcohol.  Some  States  have  for  this  reason  sought 
to  prohibit  the  consumption  of  alcohol;  others  have  sought 
to  restrict  its  use  by  law  or  regulation  temporarily  or  per- 
manently. During  the  European  war,  restrictions  were 
introduced  into  most  areas  of  Great  Britain  with  the  result 
that  there  was  a  remarkable  decline  in  convictions  for  drunk- 
enness (by  eighty-five  per  cent.)  ;  cases  of  delirium  tre- 
mens;  deaths  from  alcoholism." 

The  thought  that  the  statements  in  this  booklet  are  to  be 
taught  in  the  schools  of  England  for  years  to  come  almost 
makes  the  Liquor  people  actively  ill.  They  were  raising  pro- 
longed, wolf-like  howls  about  it  when  I  was  in  England. 
Most  of  the  Liquor  people  were  blaming  the  booklet  on 
Pussyfoot  Johnson.  Some  of  them  said  that  he  wrote  it 
and  all  of  them  said  that  he  inspired  it.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  he  had  no  more  to  do  with  it  than  he  had  to  do  with 
inspiring  or  writing  Down  where  the  Wursburger  Flows. 
The  Wets  blame  Pussyfoot  Johnson  for  everything.  If 
England  goes  dry  in  ten  years  the  Wets  will  blame  Pussy- 
foot, though  he  will  be  very  little  to  blame.  The  Wets 


308  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

think  that  Pussyfoot  is  a  sort  of  magician,  with  strange 
occult  powers,  whereas  he  is  nothing  but  a  good-natured 
plugger  against  liquor,  with  a  lot  of  horse  sense  and  bull- 
headed  nerve.  The  gambler  at  Monte  Carlo  almost  inva- 
riably plays  a  system ;  and  when  he  goes  broke  he  blames  the 
system  instead  of  the  gambling.  The  Wet  advocate  in  Eng- 
land is  always  ready  to  blame  his  troubles  on  anything 
except  drink. 

The  Prohibition  workers  have  excellent  propaganda 
pamphlets,  though  their  lack  of  money  causes  them  to  get 
them  out  in  very  restricted  numbers.  Their  greatest  diffi- 
culty lies  in  reaching  the  drinking  public.  The  Wets  reach 
the  drinkers  through  advertisements  in  the  pubs — an  avenue 
which  is  practically  closed  to  the  Drys. 

They  have  pamphlets  showing  the  improvement  in  con- 
ditions which  has  taken  place  under  Prohibition  in  America. 
One  reproduces  messages  from  the  governors  of  twenty- 
seven  states  in  the  United  States.  One — the  Governor  of 
New  Mexico — stated :  "I  believe  that  every  decent  Ameri- 
can is  in  favor  of  the  closing  of  the  saloon,  but  when  we  go 
further  than  the  teachings  of  Christ  and  say  that  a  man 
shall  not  take  a  drink,  we  are  adopting  a  law  which  is  and 
always  will  be  a  failure."  Twenty-six  governors  had 
sent  enthusiastic  messages  in  favor  of  Prohibition. 
Booklets  show  how  the  hiring  of  non-drinkers  in  certain 
plants  has  eliminated  waste  and  inefficiency,  produce  figures 
to  show  how  alcohol  increases  accidents,  give  figures  on 
drunkenness,  go  into  the  economic  side  of  the  drink  ques- 
tion and  show  the  tremendous  yearly  expenditure  on  drink, 
give  all  the  figures  on  the  capital  involved  in  the  Liquor 
Trade,  give  the  results  of  Prohibition  in  countless  cities, 
states  and  industries  in  America,  and  jump  suddenly  and 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  309 

heavily  on  the  Wets  who  make  false  statements.  The 
Brewers'  Journal  quotes  an  authority  as  saying  that  "the 
use  of  alcohol  is  beneficial  if  partaken  of  moderately,  at 
sufficient  intervals,  and  adequately  diluted."  The  United 
Kingdom  Alliance  at  once  gets  out  a  broadside  declaring  that 
this  statement  does  not  occur  in  the  quoted  authority,  calls 
The  Brewers'  Journal  a  liar  in  a  quiet  way,  and  asks  it  to 
put  up  or  shut  up.  Lord  Dewar  returns  from  America  and 
quotes  Henry  Ford  as  saying  that  he  has  seen  no  benefits 
from  Prohibition,  and  that  Prohibition  has  made  millions 
of  lawbreakers.  The  United  Kingdom  Alliance  at  once 
cables  Mr.  Ford  and  asks  whether  Lord  Dewar  had  quoted 
Mr.  Ford  correctly.  Mr.  Ford  cables  back  "Statement 
relative  Mr.  Ford  is  not  correct."  Thus  Lord  Dewar  is 
left,  so  to  speak,  holding  the  sack.  The  Drys  get  out  all  the 
details  concerning  Lord  Rowallen's  estates — seven  thousand 
houses  with  thirty  thousand  people  in  them,  not  a  pub 
allowed  among  them,  and  applications  for  houses  pouring  in 
by  every  mail ;  concerning  Toxteth  Park  in  Liverpool  where 
nearly  thirty  thousand  people  live  without  complaint  in  a 
restricted  area  which  allows  no  pubs;  about  Letchworth 
Village,  a  garden  city,  where  thousands  of  workmen  live  and 
express  themselves  so  strongly  against  pubs  that  none  is 
allowed ;  of  the  mining  community  near  Nottingham  whose 
inhabitants  subscribed  money  to  keep  out  pubs  because  they 
owned  their  own  houses;  of  the  estates  of  Arthur  Balfour, 
where  pubs  aren't  allowed  though  he  himself  is  a  strong 
supporter  of  the  Liquor  Traffic ;  of  Usher's  Whisky  estates, 
where  pubs  are  not  permitted;  and  of  many  other  similar 
examples.  They  remind  you  of  the  words  of  Mr.  Justice 
Bailhache  who,  after  passing  sentence  on  a  man  who  had 
confessed  to  a  particularly  revolting  murder,  said  to  the 


310  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

crowded  court :  "You  have  just  witnessed  the  trial  of  a  man 
of  good  connection  and  of  good  upbringing.  You  have 
seen  to  what  a  pass  drink  has  brought  him.  I  want  to  beg 
you,  with  all  the  force  I  can  put  into  my  words,  to  take 
warning  by  his  example,  and  for  God's  sake  to  keep  away 
from  drink."  And  the  Dry  pamphlets  name  over  the  ever- 
growing list  of  the  big  bankers  and  shipbuilders  and  mer- 
chants and  manufacturers  and  labor  leaders  who  are 
insisting  strongly  that  England  must  either  go  dry  or  have 
Local  Option.  The  Dry  arguments,  supported  by  facts  and 
figures,  would  more  than  fill  this  book,  and  most  of  them 
are  unanswerable  by  the  Wets. 

The  man  in  the  pub,  however — the  genuine  soaked-in- 
the-malt,  soused-in-the-suds  Beer  Worshiper — hasn't  a  very 
good  idea  what  you're  talking  about  when  you  talk  Prohibi- 
tion to  him.  Usually  he  laughs  heartily  at  any  mention  of 
Prohibition,  conceiving  such  mention  to  be  the  height  of 
facetiousness  or  a  reference  to  a  delicious  drollery  like  tun- 
neling to  China.  Sometimes  he  takes  it  seriously  and  takes 
his  lips  away  from  his  stout  long  enough  to  curse  Pussyfoot 
Johnson  fluently.  My  consular  companion  and  I  bought 
a  number  of  drinks  for  an  out-of-work  carpenter  in 
a  pub  about  three  hundred  yards  from  Marble  Arch.  We 
then  broached  the  subject  of  Prohibition  to  him.  He  could 
not  get  the  word  at  all,  though  each  of  us  bawled  it  into 
his  ear  in  turn.  He  didn't  know  what  it  meant  The  only 
Pro  he  knew  anything  about  was  Pro-German.  However, 
our  efforts  got  him  started.  He  had  had  his  drink,  he  said, 
ever  since  he  was  able  to  stand  up  at  the  bar  and  take  his 
own.  Some  drinkers,  now,  make  a  great  mistake,  because 
they  go  without  all  the  week  and  then  hog  it  down  on  Sat- 
urday. He  had  never  made  that  error.  He  always  got  his 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  311 

regularly — five  or  six  times  a  day.  He  needed  a  shot  of  beer 
at  ten-thirty  every  day,  and  now  that  the  pubs  weren't  open 
until  noon,  he  never  felt  right  in  the  morning.  These  new, 
outlandish  closing  hours,  he  observed,  were  awful  on  the 
bus  drivers  and  the  other  early  workers,  who  suffered 
keenly  unless  they  could  get  an  early-morning  drink.  He 
brooded  over  this  to  such  an  extent  that  he  began  to  cry,  so 
we  came  away  and  left  him. 

We  interviewed  scores  of  working  men  on  Prohibition, 
and  out  of  the  number  we  found  only  one  who  had  a  good 
or  a  thoughtful  word  to  say  for  it.  That  one  man  said  that 
he'd  just  as  soon  it  would  come  as  not :  if  it  came  he  might 
be  able  to  save  money  a  little  faster  and  get  over  to  Canada 
sooner,  where  a  feller  had  a  chance.  The  rest  confined 
themselves  to  complaining  bitterly  because  of  the  restricted 
hours  for  selling  liquor,  and  to  cursing  the  weakness  of  the 
beer.  Before  the  war  it  was  five  per  cent  alcohol,  during 
the  war  it  was  three  per  cent.,  and  at  present  it  is  four  per 
cent,  alcohol.  One  man  advanced  the  clever  theory  that 
Germany  had  actually  won  the  war  because  Germany  sells 
beer  at  all  hours,  whereas  England  only  sells  it  for  five 
hours  a  day.  As  yet  the  English  Beer  Worshiper  isn't 
educated  on  the  subject  of  drink. 

An  English  club-man  gave  me  a  good  average  Wet 
English  talk  when  I  asked  him  about  Prohibition.  "What 
I  mean,"  said  he — the  average  Englishman  is  troubled  with 
the  what-I-mean  affectation  just  at  present :  he  likes  to  start 
a  new  sentence  with  what-I-mean  even  though  nothing  with 
any  meaning  at  all  has  preceded  the  remark —  "What  I 
mean,  it's  a  terrible  thing  for  a  rich  country  like  America  to 
inflict  such  a  horrible  thing  on  the  rest  of  the  world  for 
money,  you  know.  What  I  mean,  the  general  effect  of  the 
idea  is  deplorable,  what?" 


312  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

"Just  what  has  this,  if  true,  got  to  do  with  Prohibition  ?" 
I  asked. 

"Look  here,  old  chap,"  he  said,  "what  I  mean,  this  John- 
son intervention  of  yours  is  an  idealistic  humanitarian  inter- 
vention and  all  that  sort  of  rot,  what  ?  for  the  good  of  man- 
kind, isn't  that  so,  old  chap?  Now  don't  be  angry,  you 
know ;  but  you  American  chaps  are  so  touchy,  what  I  mean, 
you  hate  criticism  and  all  that  sort  of  thing;  but  really,  old 
fellow,  you  won't  mind  this,  will  you  now,  what?" 

"Go  as  slowly  as  possible,  and  don't  mind  me,"  I  begged. 

"What  I  mean,"  he  continued  firmly,  "you  pretend  to  be 
idealists,  you  know,  but  you  don't  come  to  us  with  clean 
hands.  You  say  that  whisky  is  poison,  and  then  you  turn 
around  and  perform  your  good  deeds  for  all  humanity  by 
sending  this  poison  out  of  your  country  and  into  other  coun- 
tries, and  by  taking  payment  and  profit  on  it.  What  I 
mean,  if  it  wrecks  every  home  it  enters,  you  should  pour  it 
down  the  drain  and  not  send  it  to  us,  as  you  do,  old  chap. 
What?  What  I  mean,  how  can  you  expect  us  to  enthuse 
over  Prohibition  if  it  works  that  way  with  you?" 

"Do  I  understand  you  to  say,"  I  asked,  "that  the  Anti- 
Saloon  League  is  sending  bad  whisky  to  England  ?" 

"Oh,  my  dear  chap ;  no,  no !"  he  said.  "No,  no !  What 
I  mean,  America  sends  it,  and  also  sends  Johnson,  what? 
It  won't  do,  old  fellow:  really,  you  know,  it  won't  wash, 
what  I  mean." 

Now  it  was  no  use  to  carry  this  conversation  to  greater 
lengths.  Early  in  1920  there  were  shipments  of  bad  Ameri- 
can whisky  to  England.  These  shipments  were  stopped  in  a 
very  short  time.  Yet  great  numbers  of  educated  Englishmen 
have  somehow  succeeded  in  twisting  this  fact  firmly  into 
their  heads,  and  constantly  use  it  as  an  argument  as  to  why 


THE  BEER  WORSHIPERS  313 

England  should  scorn  and  spurn  the  Prohibition  movement. 
It  does  no  good  to  shriek  and  tear  out  handfuls  of  hair;  for 
the  Englishman  at  once  becomes  very  superior  and  remarks : 
"What  I  mean,  you  know,  you  Americans  do  so  resent  a 
little  criticism." 

The  Scotch  Temperance  leaders  say  that  English  work- 
men are  so  sodden  with  beer  that  the  country  will  never  vote 
itself  dry.  The  Temperance  people  in  the  Strength  of  Bri- 
tain Movement  say  that  if  England  depends  on  Local  Option 
to  go  dry,  it  will  be  a  fifty-year  task.  Pussyfoot  Johnson, 
who  is  a  good  Prohibition  dopester,  predicts  a  Dry  England 
by  1930. 

And  here  is  what  two  big  Englishmen  say : 
Lord  Leverhulme,  a  millionaire  soap  manufacturer,  says : 
"One  of  the  results  of  prohibition  is  that  America  is  now 
saving  four  hundred  million  pounds  a  year  through  Prohibi- 
tion. England  owes  America  about  two  billion  pounds,  and 
if  we  were  to  save  on  our  drink  bill  at  the  rate  America  is 
doing  we  should  pay  off  our  debt  in  five  years.  Now  the 
lender  of  money  is  saving  millions,  and  we  are  spending  it. 
This  policy  is  the  reverse  of  what  it  should  be.  England's 
position  is  very  much  like  that  of  a  young  man  with  a  heavy 
mortgage  on  his  home.  He  should  cut  down  all  unnecessary 
waste  and  concentrate  upon  production,  with  no  waste. 

"While  I  should  prefer  that  alcohol  should  be  obtainable, 
and  that  through  strength  of  will,  rather  than  by  strength  of 
law,  it  should  not  be  consumed,  I  believe  the  policy  of  going 
dry  in  America  means  that  in  the  world's  race  America  has 
thrown  away  a  heavy  weight,  and  we,  who  are  already 
behind  in  the  race,  are  adding  to  our  weight." 

Sir  James  Hope  Simpson,  Director  and  General  Manager 
of  the  Bank  of  Liverpool  and  Martins,  Ltd.,  has  recently 


314  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

returned  to  England  from  a  visit  to  America.  He  was 
amazed  by  the  benefits  which  Prohibition  had  brought.  "I 
was  impressed  above  all,"  he  said,  "by  the  enormous  indus- 
trial advantage  which  the  Americans  have  already  begun  to 
reap  from  their  policy  of  the  prohibition  of  drink.  In  my 
judgment,  Prohibition  has  made  America  the  most  formid- 
able industrial  competitor  that  we  have  in  the  world." 

The  prime  minister  of  England  has  said  that  if  America 
stays — and  really  stays — dry  until  1930,  England  will  have 
to  go  dry  as  well.  He  knows  that  his  country  can  not  com- 
pete with  a  more  efficient  dry  America  in  the  markets  of  the 
world.  The  big  business  men  of  England  are  rapidly  wak- 
ing up  to  the  same  fact.  It  might  take  the  Beer  Worshipers 
of  England  fifty  years  to  vote  themselves  dry.  If  America 
stays  dry,  however,  the  Beer  Worshipers  will  never  be 
forced  to  suffer  from  an  epidemic  of  writer's  cramp  from 
voting  on  that  question;  and  the  New  Yorkers  who  lost 
money  betting  that  Prohibition  would  never  come  can  recoup 
their  losses  by  putting  their  money  on  Lloyd  George's  dope 
sheet  for  the  Prohibition  sweepstakes. 


Scotland  for  Scotch 

THE  student  of  Scotch  whisky — and  of  the  actions  and 
reactions  of  Scotch  whisky  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
Scotch  people — is  somewhat  handicapped  by  the  haziness  of 
early  Scotch  history,  which  is  as  muddled  and  messy  as 
though  it  had  been  written  by  a  lowland  Scotchman  laden 
internally  with  about  three  quarts  of  that  potable  spirit 
known  as  Highland  malt. 

In  the  extreme  background  of  the  earliest  reliable  facts 
which  can  be  discovered  concerning  Scotland,  one  finds 
rumors  of  a  fluid  known  as  usquebaugh  or  water  of  life — 
usquebaugh  or  Uisgebcatha  being  the  Celtic  word  which  was 
later  contracted  to  whisky  by  persons  who  were  more  suc- 
cessful at  drinking  than  at  pronouncing.  Thus,  one  finds 
the  Irish  coming  over  to  Scotland  and  fighting  with  the 
Scots  away  back  in  the  dawn  of  Scotch  history.  The  Irish 
brought  their  own  usquebaugh  with  them,  and  the  Scotch 
had  their  own  private  blends.  When  they  weren't  hitting 
the  usquebaugh,  as  the  phrase  goes,  they  were  hitting  each 
other,  and  vice  versa.  At  this  late  date  the  historian  is 
unable  to  determine  with  any  accuracy  whether  they  fought 
because  they  had  been  drinking  usquebaugh,  or  whether  they 
drank  usquebaugh  to  quench  the  thirst  which  resulted  from 
the  fighting. 

315 


316  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Back  of  that  the  investigator  loses  himself  in  the  haze. 
There  are  very  ancient  stones  in  Ogam,  Scotland,  bearing 
inscriptions  which  yield  no  sense  in  any  known  Indo-Euro- 
pean language ;  but  a  great  many  of  the  leading  Scotch  con- 
troversialists, accustomed  by  training  and  instinct  to  find 
controversies  in  stones,  controversies  in  running  brooks 
and  controversies  in  everything,  claim  that  these  unde- 
cipherable inscriptions  are  recipes  for  making  what  is  tech- 
nically known  among  whisky  experts  as  a  big  whisky  with 
a  full  peaty  flavor. 

One  Scotch  controversialist,  whose  revenue  is  partly 
derived  from  a  flourishing  distillery,  professed  to  have  a 
large  amount  of  inside  information  concerning  the  tonic 
qualities  of  Scotch  whisky  on  the  early  inhabitants  of  his 
country;  and  he  insisted  on  taking  me  to  his  Glasgow 
club  where  he  could  get  at  a  pencil  and  paper — and  a  private 
bottle  of  a  fine  old  Islay  malt  whisky  with  an  ethereal  bou- 
quet strong  enough  to  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  an  ammonia- 
maker.  At  his  club  he  demonstrated  by  diagrams,  dates  and 
drinks  how  Scotch  whisky  had  changed  the  entire  history 
of  Scotland. 

He  claimed — I  answer  for  none  of  his  claims  because  it 
is  my  belief  that  controversialists  are  apt  to  claim  everything 
in  sight,  especially  if  they  are  in  danger  of  losing  money — 
he  claimed  that  whisky  was  invented  by  the  Picts,  who  were 
a  runty,  tough,  hardy  race  of  people  concerning  whom 
nobody  knows  much  of  anything  except  that  they  occupied 
the  Highlands  of  Scotland  for  many  centuries.  He  claimed 
that  the  reason  why  the  Picts  were  originally  able  to  whip 
double  their  weight  in  wildcats  and  three  times  their  weight 
in  Romans  and  Scotchmen  was  because  they  drank  vast 
quantities  of  a  home-distilled  brand  of  whisky  of  sufficient 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  317 

potency  to  remove  the  paint  from  a  battle-ship.  Early  in 
the  ninth  century,  he  claimed,  gradually  freeing  the  kinks 
from  his  claimer  and  making  it  work  with  more  fluency,  the 
Scandinavian  sea  rovers  landed  in  Scotland,  seized  a  little 
rich  land  along  the  shores  and  started  in  to  do  some  farming, 
varying  the  monotony  by  their  favorite  indoor  and  outdoor 
sport  of  beer-drinking.  The  Picts,  coming  down  from  their 
highland  fastnesses  full  to  the  brim  of  whisky  and  desire  to 
knock  the  eye-teeth  of  the  Scandinavians  out  through  their 
ears,  saw  the  passionate  delight  which  the  Scandinavians 
took  in  their  beer-drinking  and  began  to  wonder  how  the 
beer  tasted.  They  accordingly  submerged  their  differences 
and  fraternized  with  the  Scandinavians. 

When  they  recovered  from  their  headaches  they  secured 
the  recipe  for  making  beer  from  the  Scandinavians  and  took 
it  back  home  with  them.  It  became  fashionable  among  the 
Picts  to  drink  beer. 

As  a  result,  the  remarkable  strength  and  cunning  which 
the  Picts  had  developed  because  of  their  long  and  single- 
minded  devotion  to  whisky  was  diffused  and  weakened. 
Being  naturally  small  in  stature,  they  became  much  inferior 
to  the  Scotchmen,  who  were  fine  large  men  with  knobby 
knees.  When,  therefore,  they  were  attacked  in  the  year  860 
by  Kenneth  MacAlpine  of  Kintyre,  King  of  the  Dalriad 
Scots  of  Argyll,  the  Picts  were  subjugated  for  the  first  time. 

This  energetic  and  comprehensive  claimer  further 
claimed  that  the  Picts,  having  been  thus  weaned  from 
whisky,  gradually  became  extinct.  Their  conquerors  and 
successors,  the  Scotch,  divided  their  attention  between 
whisky  and  ale  for  many  years,  and  consequently  failed  to 
maintain  those  mental  and  physical  heights  to  which  they 
might  have  won  had  they  specialized  on  whisky. 


318  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

In  the-  twelfth  century,  for  example,  every  religious 
house  and  every  barony  in  Scotland  had  at  least  one  brew- 
ery. Things  didn't  go  well  for  Scotland.  Then,  according 
to  the  claims  of  this  fluent  controversialist,  the  Scotch  began 
to  give  up  ale  and  beer  and  devote  their  finest  efforts  to  the 
consumption  of  Scotch  whisky.  "What,"  demanded  the 
controversialist  pregnantly,  "what  has  been  the  result?"  He 
threw  a  prehensile  upper  lip  over  his  glass  of  Islay,  closed 
his  eyes,  tossed  down  half  its  contents,  shuddered  slightly, 
and  then  answered  himself.  "For  many  years,"  said  he, 
"Scotch  whisky  has  been  the  national  drink  of  Scotland. 
Aye,  the  national  drink.  And  who  is  it  that's  at  the  head 
of  English  banks  and  English  businesses,  and  English  fac- 
tories to-day?  The  Scotch!  Aye!  Who  is  it  that's  at  the 
head  of  the  big  projects  in  England's  colonies?  The  Scotch ! 
Aye,  the  Scotch,  God  bless  'em !  That's  what  Scotch  whisk)1 
has  done  for  Scotland!  Give  the  Scotch  enough  Scotch 
whisky  and  they'll  rule  the  world!"  He  hiccupped  loudly, 
and  gazed  affectionately  at  the  bottle  which  had  so  recently 
held  a  quart  of  Islay  with  a  flavor  reminiscent  of  a  fire  in 
a  peat  stack. 

In  one  respect  at  least  the  controversialist  was  correct. 
The  Scotch,  like  the  English,  have  been  accustomed  to  dally 
with  alcoholic  beverages  with  the  utmost  freedom  ever  since 
the  dawn  of  Scottish  history;  and  the  national  drink  of 
Scotland  is  whisky,  just  as  the  national  drink  of  England  is 
beer.  More  whisky  is  drunk  per  capita  in  Scotland  than  in 
any  other  country  in  the  world.  The  English  are  determined 
and  efficient  drinkers,  and  the  Englishman  all  over  the  world 
is  noted  for  his  attachment  to  whisky-and-soda.  Yet  the 
English,  per  capita,  drink  about  one-half  as  much  as  do  the 
Scotch.  This  works  out  year  after  year  in  a  persistent 


The  Wets  of  Scotland  warn  the  people  of  the  horrors  of  Prohibition. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  319 

manner.  In  1891  the  per  capita  consumption  of  spirits  in 
England  and  Wales  was  nine-tenths  of  a  gallon  and  in  Scot- 
land it  was  one  gallon  and  eight-tenths.  In  1900  Old  Man 
Per  Capita  consumed  just  short  of  one  gallon  in  England, 
while  in  Scotland  he  sucked  up  just  short  of  two  gallons. 
In  1914  the  figures  for  England  showed  two-thirds  of  a 
gallon  consumed  per  capita;  and  one  and  one-third  gallons 
was  the  corresponding  figure  for  Scotland.  There  are  one 
hundred  and  twelve  distilleries  doing  a  rushing  business  in 
Scotland  as  against  seven  distilleries  in  England.  During 
1919  the  Scotch  lapped  up  3,282,000  imperial  proof  gallons 
of  whisky  and  spent  over  eighteen  million  pounds — or  sixty 
million  dollars  at  the  normal  rate  of  exchange — in  so  doing. 
Two  Scotchmen  who  have  had  even  the  slightest  experience 
in  drinking  sit  down  at  a  table  and  split  a  quart  of  Scotch 
whisky  with  the  same  insouciance  with  which  two  frugal 
Americans,  in  the  old  days,  might  have  split  a  bottle  of  beer. 
The  imperial  proof  gallon,  with  which  one  is  constantly 
coming  in  contact  when  moving  in  select  British  alcoholic 
circles,  should  be  explained  at  this  juncture.  An  American 
gallon  contains  seven-tenths  as  much  liquid  as  does  an  impe- 
rial gallon.  A  proof  gallon  is  the  basis  of  taxation  of  spirits 
in  the  United  Kingdom ;  and  a  proof  gallon  of  whisky  con- 
tains fifty-seven  per  cent,  by  volume  of  absolute  alcohol.  All 
spirits  sold  in  the  United  Kingdom  must  be,  by  order  of  the 
Liquor  Control  Board,  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof.  This  is 
a  war  measure.  To  change  one  hundred  gallons  of  proof 
whisky  into  whisky  that  is  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof,  one 
adds  43.9  gallons  of  water — getting  142.8  gallons  because 
of  the  peculiar  contraction  of  bulk  which  takes  place  when 
alcohol  and  water  are  mixed.  The  alcoholic  strength  of  a 
thirty  per  cent,  under  proof  whisky  is  forty  per  cent 


320  ;WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

The  majority  of  Scotch  drinkers  are  unable  to  explain 
the  proof  gallon  or  the  alcoholic  content  of  a  thirty  per  cent, 
under  proof  whisky.  They  attempt  it  frequently  and  get 
themselves  badly  twisted,  and  occasionally  break  down  and 
cry  over  the  subject,  especially  after  dallying  with  a  few 
glasses  of  it.  Every  Scotch  whisky-drinker,  however, 
assures  the  investigator  that  a  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof 
whisky  is  so  weak  that  it  has  about  as  much  effect  on  the 
drinker  as  goat's  milk.  He  will  make  this  assertion  with  all 
solemnity  at  moments  when  the  bar  is  revolving  before  him 
in  a  slow  and  stately  manner  as  a  result  of  the  action  of 
thirty  per  cent,  under  proof  whisky  on  his  eyes.  There  have 
been  a  number  of  canards  circulated  concerning  the  weak- 
ness of  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof  whisky;  but  after  con- 
stant experimenting  with  gentlemen  who  kindly  offered  me 
their  services  for  experimental  purposes,  I  can  state  confi- 
dently that  ten  quick  drinks  of  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof 
whisky  will  usually  cause  the  drinker  to  pick  a  fight  with  the 
nearest  trolley-car  or  compose  himself  for  slumber  in  any 
convenient  gutter. 

As  a  result  of  their  persistent  tampering  with  hard 
liquor,  the  Scotch  are  able  to  produce  some  very  finished 
specimens  of  the  souse  family.  Saturday  night,  in  any 
Scotch  city  or  town,  sees  more  whole-hearted  ossification 
and  spifflication  than  it  sees  anywhere  else.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  belief  in  many  parts  of  Scotland  that  Scotch  water 
has  an  evil  effect  on  the  teeth;  and  strangers  are  urged 
warningly  to  "look  what  it  does  to  iron."  The  Scotch  also 
believe  that  water  rusts  and  eats  away  the  veins  and  the 
arteries  and  the  internal  organs,  while  whisky  purifies  and 
toughens  and  preserves  them.  If  this  is  so,  there  are  some 
Scotchmen  who  ought  to  live  to  be  a  million  years  old. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  321 

Down  in  England  there  is  constant  talk  of  this  Scotch 
enthusiasm  for  hard  liquor,  and  one  is  urged — if  he  thinks 
that  the  English  are  sodden  with  drink — to  go  on  up  to 
Scotland  and  look  'em  over.  The  Scotch  readily  admit  that 
there  are  some  gorgeous  souses  among  their  number;  but 
they  maintain  heatedly  that  England  is  really  more  alcoholic 
than  Scotland.  The  English,  they  say,  suck  away  at  their 
beer  every  day  and  are  sodden  with  it;  whereas  the  Scotch 
go  out  two  or  three  nights  a  week,  or  on  Saturday  night, 
and  get  themselves  lit  up  like  a  summer  hotel  on  the  Fourth 
of  July,  and  then  don't  touch  the  stuff  again  for  several 
days.  This,  of  course,  is  one  of  the  controversial  subjects 
with  which  the  Scotch  love  to  toy.  The  English  say  that 
they  are  not  sodden,  but  that  the  Scotch  are  sodden:  the 
Scotch  say  that  for  soddenness  the  English  are  without 
peers.  It  is  a  case  of  sodden,  sodden,  who's  got  the  sodden, 
so  to  speak 

"Glasgow,"  said  Englishman  after  Englishman  to  me. 
"is  the  drunkennest  city  in  Scotland.  Go  up  to  Glasgow  on 
a  Saturday  night  and  walk  up  and  down  Argyle  Street  and 
you'll  see  some  sights !" 

So  I  went  up  to  Glasgow,  which  the  Scotch  call  Glesca ; 
and  I  walked  up  and  down  Argyle  Street  on  a  Saturday 
night.  I  also  walked  up  and  down  Sauchiehall  Street — 
which  is  pronounced  Soaky-all,  probably  in  honor  of  all  the 
soaks  that  do  their  soaking  there  and  thereabouts — and  I 
took  a  daunder  down  Sautmarket  and  dawdled  through 
Cowcaddens  and  Bridgeton,  which  are  about  as  shimmy 
slums  as  ever  I  hope  to  see.  I  went  through  these  places  on 
Saturday  night  and  Sunday  night  and  holiday  nights  and 
ordinary  week-day  nights.  I  went  through  them  with 
Scotch  newspaper  men,  and  I  went  through  them  with  a 


322  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

young  woman,  and  I  went  through  them  with  two  American 
officers  from  the  Army  of  Occupation  in  Germany,  and  I 
went  through  them  alone ;  and  it  was  my  opinion  after  each 
trip  and  after  all  the  trips  together  that  the  people  who  call 
Glasgow  the  drunkennest  city  in  Scotland  have  expressed 
the  situation  neatly  but  sketchily,  whereas  those  who  call 
Glasgow  the  drunkennest  city  in  the  world  have,  to  quote 
the  rude  patois  of  Manhattan  Island,  said  a  mouthful. 

The  Scotch,  of  course,  wax  controversial  over  the  ques- 
tion. The  Glasgow  Scotchmen  say  that  there  is  a  lot  of 
drunkenness  in  the  city — too  much  by  far;  but  that  there  is 
a  more  virulent  and  concentrated  form  of  drunkenness  in  the 
adjacent  city  of  Greenock,  the  manufacturing  and  shipbuild- 
ing center  whence  came  Jamie  Watt,  who  made  steam 
famous.  The  Greenock  Scotchmen  smile  dourly  and  say 
that  Glasgow  has  the  bonniest  drunks — aye!  and  that  Edin- 
burgh runs  Glasgow  a  close  second.  The  Glasgow  citizens 
also  claim  that  there  is  more  misery  from  drink  in  Edin- 
burgh than  in  Glasgow.  The  Edinburgh  citizens  deny  it 
indignantly,  and  award  the  palm  for  all-round  tipsiness  to 
Glasgow. 

During  the  first  sixteen  weeks  of  1920,  the  number  of 
persons  who  were  convicted  of,  or  who  forfeited  pledges 
in  Glasgow  for  offenses  involving  drunkenness,  was  6,077 
males  and  1,344  females — or  a  total  of  7,421  hard-boiled 
souses  in  less  than  one-third  of  a  year.  This  number  was 
smaller  than  during  a  pre-war  year  because  certain  war- 
time restrictions  still  applied;  but  it  was  very  much  larger 
than  in  1918  and  1919,  when  Scotland's  liquor  supply  was 
greatly  restricted  at  the  source.  For  the  corresponding 
period  in  1918  there  were  only  1,779  convicted  drunks  of 
both  sexes  in  Glasgow;  and  in  1919  there  were  only  1,426 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  323 

of  them  during  the  first  sixteen  weeks  of  the  year.  As  the 
war-time  restrictions  were  removed,  the  drunk  came  into 
its  own  again  with  a  loud  wet  splash. 

The  first  thirty-two  weeks  of  1920  showed  17,177  con- 
victions for  drunkenness  in  Glasgow,  or  one  conviction  for 
every  twenty-three  men  over  twenty-one  years  of  age. 
When  a  Glasgow  citizen  of  the  wet  persuasion  begins  to 
wave  his  arms  wildly  and  deny  that  Scotchmen  are  particu- 
larly heavy  drinkers,  it  is  easy  to  give  him  the^gentle  razz  by 
reminding  him  that  Glasgow  alone  spends  as  much  on  drink 
every  week  as  would  build  one  hundred  and  eighty  cottages 
at  seven  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  per  cottage. 

It  should  be  understood  that  the  number  of  persons  con- 
victed for  offenses  involving  drunkenness  has  no  bearing  at 
all  on  the  number  of  persons  who  are  drunk.  I  have  never 
had  any  Scotchman  explain  to  me  what  one  must  do  in  addi- 
tion to  being  drunk  in  order  to  be  arrested  for  drunkenness 
in  Glasgow ;  but  it  is  my  impression  that  one  can  sop  up  all 
the  whisky  one  may  be  able  to  hold  and  roll  around  in  the 
streets  and  howl  and  yell  and  cuss  and  finally  be  dragged 
home  by  friends,  and  the  police  will  look  on  with  a  benignant 
and  imperturbable  eye  so  long  as  one  doesn't  attempt  to 
murder  a  cab-driver  or  set  fire  to  a  house  or  otherwise 
become  a  trifle  rough  in  one's  actions. 

On  a  Thursday  night  I  walked  through  the  crowded 
mobs  of  Argyle  Street,  from  one  end  to  the  other  and  back 
again.  During  the  walk  I  saw  only  five  policemen,  four  in 
pairs  and  one  alone.  There  were  literally  hundreds  of 
drunks.  They  weren't  men  that  were  slightly  under  the 
influence  of  liquor:  they  were  in  that  condition  which  is 
vulgarly  known  as  stewed  to  the  ears.  They  were  clinging 
to  doorways  and  tumbling  up  against  the  passers-by  and 


324  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

falling  off  the  sidewalks  into  the  gutters  and  supporting 
each  other  in  abortive  attempts  to  proceed  in  some  definite 
direction  which  could  neither  be  determined  by  a  casual 
observer  nor  by  a  scientist  equipped  with  instruments  for 
plotting  the  curve  of  their  footsteps.  I  saw  two  drunks, 
dragging  between  them  a  third  drunker  drunk,  stagger 
crazily  under  the  very  nose  of  a  lone  policeman.  He  gazed 
at  them  broodingly;  and  as  they  staggered  onward  he 
wearily  turned  his  eyes  away  in  search  of  more  interesting 
matters. 

On  another  night  I  saw  two  men  with  monumental  jags 
pitch  out  of  a  doorway  just  where  Argyle  Street  runs  under 
the  Central  Railway  Station,  and  where  the  crowds  are  so 
thick  between  eight  and  ten  o'clock  every  night  that  one 
must  use  force  in  order  to  get  through.  They  were  fighting 
industriously.  They  plunged  off  the  curb ;  and  their  impetus 
carried  them  to  the  street-car  tracks.  The  wheels  of  a 
double-deck  tram  passed  a  fraction  of  an  inch  from  the  head 
of  one  of  them,  and  after  it  had  passed  a  stranger  rolled  him 
back  from  the  car-tracks  into  the  gutter. 

I  saw  a  man  and  a  woman,  fighting  drunk,  start  slugging 
each  other  with  their  fists  in  the  middle  of  Main  Street  in 
the  Bridgeton  section  of  Glasgow.  The  woman  seemed  to 
be  getting  the  best  of  it  when  another  man  came  running 
up  and  hit  her  under  the  left  ear;  so  that  her  attack,  in  a 
manner  of  speaking,  broke  down.  I  saw  scores  of  drunken 
women,  some  of  them  with  their  babies  wrapped  in  their 
shawls  in  the  peculiarly  Scotch  manner;  and  a  number  of 
drunken  girls  about  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  old. 

And  out  of  all  the  nights  that  I  walked  the  streets  of 
Glasgow,  I  saw  not  one  arrest  for  drunkenness.  Therefore 
I  say  that  the  number  of  persons  convicted  for  drunkenness 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  325 

has  no  bearing  on  the  number  of  persons  who  are  drunk. 
Certainly — and  though  I  believe  my  estimate  to  be  unneces- 
sarily conservative,  the  Wets  will  call  me  seventeen  sorts  of 
liar  for  the  statement — certainly  there  are  more  than  one 
hundred  unarrested  drunks  in  Glasgow  for  each  one  that  is 
arrested. 

I  have  witnessed  a  large  number  of  souse-parties,  rang- 
ing from  the  hectic  celebrations  in  college  towns  after  big 
football  victories  to  the  fireworks  which  resulted  when  two 
thousand  American  soldiers  were  turned  loose  to  lap  up 
Japanese  Scotch  whisky  in  Hakodate,  the  fishing  metropolis 
of  Northern  Japan ;  but  never  have  I  seen  more  degrading, 
depressing,  sickening  drunkenness  than  I  saw  in  one  night 
in  the  city  of  Glasgow. 

Glasgow's  largest  and  most  influential  newspaper,  shortly 
before  the  1920  elections,  stated  editorially  that  for  the 
people  to  vote  to  retain  public-houses  "would  mean  that  for 
at  least  three  years  more  we  should  witness  that  excess  of 
drunkenness  on  our  streets  which  is  an  index  to  the  misery 
of  thousands  of  women  and  children  and  to  an  amount  of 
self-inflicted  inefficiency  in  industrial  life  which  shames  our 
boasted  civilization."  This  newspaper,  by  the  way,  was  the 
only  influential  paper  in  all  Scotland — and  England  too,  for 
that  matter — which  came  out  flat-footed  in  favor  of  Prohi- 
bition. The  English  newspapers  took  it  to  task  severely  for 
its  attitude;  and  one  staunch  and  representative  English 
journal  referred  frequently  to  the  editorial  stand  of  the  Glas- 
gow paper  as  "that  unedifying  spectacle"  and  spoke  of  the 
anti-Prohibitionists  as  "the  forces  of  common  sense  and 
decency,"  and  of  the  Prohibitionists  as  "bigoted  and  wrong- 
headed  people  working  in  a  bad  cause." 

The  slums  of  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh,  which  produce 


326  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

by  far  the  largest  percentage  of  Scotch  souses,  are  the  equals 
of  any  slums  in  the  world.  The  slum  districts,  in  many 
instances,  are  composed  of  houses  which  were  old  when 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was  complaining  about  the  Scotch 
climate  and  getting  ready  to  be  beheaded.  From  the  old 
town  of  Edinburgh  down  to  the  turreted  walls  of  Holyrood 
Palace  runs  a  straight  steep  street  about  a  third  of  a  mile  in 
length  known  as  the  Canongate.  The  Canongate,  and  the 
narrow  alley-ways  and  courtyards  and  holes-in-the-wall 
which  lead  from  it — alleys  and  holes  known  in  Scotland  as 
wynds  and  closes — make  up  the  principal  slum  district  of 
Edinburgh.  The  houses  which  abut  on  the  Canongate  and 
its  dark  offshoots  are  towering  buildings  of  dingy  gray 
stone,  eight,  ten,  twelve  and  even  fourteen  stories  high.* 
These  buildings  are  known  as  lands;  and  in  the  old  days 
they  were  inhabited  by  Scotland's  best.  Poets,  statesmen, 
scholars,  clergymen,  philosophers  and  belles  of  the  Assembly 
Rooms  passed  one  another  daily  on  their  narrow  staircases. 
Here  lived  the  most  powerful  and  famous  of  the  Scotch 
nobility — the  Dukes  of  Queensberry  and  Hamilton,  the 
Marquis  of  Argyll,  the  Earls  of  Dalhousie,  Moray,  Breadal- 
bane,  Haddington,  Panmure — the  list  is  long  and  impressive. 
John  Knox's  house  adjoins  it,  and  Blackfriars  Street,  for- 
merly Blackfriars  Wynd,  on  which  were  built  the  homes  of 
cardinals,  archbishops,  princes — and  above  all  the  princely 
house  of  St.  Qair,  Earls  of  Orkney  and  Rosslyn.  When 
Earl  William  headed  this  family,  the  Scotch  records  show, 
his  lady  never  rode  out  of  Blackfriars  Wynd  and  down  the 

*Various  Scotch  correspondents  have  sneered  at  me  viciously  for 
stating  that  Edinburgh  has  fourteen-storey  lands.  They  told  me  flatly 
that  I  was  a  liar.  They  had  never  counted  them,  however;  and  I  had. 
Sevenson  speaks  of  seventeen-storey  Edinburgh  lands;  but  I  couldn't 
find  them. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  327 

Canongate  but  she  was  accompanied  by  two  hundred  belted 
knights;  and  when  she  came  home  late  at  night,  she  didn't 
come  in  the  dark ;  for  eighty  pages,  all  of  noble  birth,  held 
torches  on  either  side.  She  was  attended  by  seventy-five 
gentlewomen,  of  whom  fifty-three  were  daughters  of  noble- 
men, all  clothed  in  velvets  and  silks,  with  chains  of  gold .... 

To-day  the  lands  of  the  Canongate  are  the  abodes  of 
misery.  Six,  eight,  ten  and  even  more  people  huddle  in 
dark,  squalid,  filthy  cubicles  of  rooms.  The  spare  money 
of  the  families — or  rather,  the  money  which  should  be  spent 
on  decent  clothes  and  decent  food — is  spent  on  whisky.  The 
children  who  dart  in  and  out  of  the  wynds  and  closes  have 
neither  shoes  nor  stockings  in  many  instances,  even  in  the 
raw  and  biting  weather  of  a  late  Scotch  autumn;  and  their 
clothes  are  of  the  meanest  and  sleaziest  materials,  and  often 
ragged  to  boot. 

Doctor  Littlejohn,  Medical  Officer  of  Health  for  Edin- 
burgh at  a  time  when  more  than  five  million  dollars  was 
spent  on  housing  and  in  clearing  away  the  haunts  of  poverty 
and  wretchedness,  made  the  following  statement:  "The 
greatest  obstacle  to  the  improvement  of  the  homes  of  the 
working  classes  has  been  intemperance,  leading  to  improvi- 
dence and  poverty.  Wherever  a  home  is  found  in  a  wretched 
condition,  out  of  repair  and  unwholesome  owing  to  squalor 
and  filth,  in  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  the  cause  is  the 
use  of  alcoholic  liquors.  Until  the  habits  of  the  working 
classes  undergo  alteration,  it  is  impossible  to  expect  that 
they  will  be  decently  housed.  The  temptations  by  which 
they  are  surrounded  in  the  shape  of  spirit  shops  are  such 
that  good  resolutions  are  easily  broken  down,  and  the  efforts 
of  social  reformers  are  completely  frustrated.  Our  great 
scheme  of  city  improvement has  been  rendered  almost 


328  .WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

nugatory,  so  far  as  the  housing  of  the  poorer  classes  is  con- 
cerned, by  the  prevalence  of  intemperance." 

The  last  time  I  passed  Blackfriars  Street,  out  of  which 
used  to  ride  the  lady  of  the  house  of  St.  Clair  with  her  two 
hundred  belted  knights,  there  were  three  gray-haired  Scotch 
women,  drunk,  staggering  down  it  arm  in  arm  through  a 
cold  rain.  

One  of  the  great  causes  of  infant  mortality  in  Scotland 
and  England  is  what  the  British  call  "overlaying."  A 
mother,  stupefied  by  liquor,  rolls  over  on  her  baby  in  her 
sleep,  and  the  baby  strangles.  That  is  "overlaying."  In 
the  last  pre-war  year  1,226  babies  were  killed  by  "overlay- 
ing." America  has  never  known  this  form  of  child-killing; 
but  it  is  common  in  Scotland. 

The  public-houses  of  Scotland  are  more  like  the  bar- 
rooms of  America  than  the  pubs  of  England.  The  women 
don't  bulge  up  to  the  bar,  as  they  do  in  England;  and  in 
more  refined  drinking  circles  there  is  a  pronounced  belief 
that  when  a  woman  wants  a  drink,  she  should  get  it  as  incon- 
spicuously as  possible.  Consequently  there  is  a  back  room 
in  most  Scotch  pubs,  and  the  women  steer  for  the  back 
rooms.  In  the  slum  districts,  however — like  the  Canongate 
in  Edinburgh,  for  example — the  women  go  into  the  bar  with 
the  men.  I  dropped  into  one  bar  on  the  Canongate — in 
the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  of  course — and  when  the  bar- 
keeper slipped  me  a  jolt  of  Glenlivet,  he  had  to  pass  it  over 
the  head  of  six  lady  patrons  who  were  roasting  the  weakness 
of  thirty  per  cent,  under  proof  whisky  with  such  venom  that 
one  might  have  thought  they  had  to  drink  a  gallon  apiece 
in  order  to  get  a  glow. 

One  marked  difference  between  the  bars  of  Scotland  and 
the  bars  that  America  knew  lies  in  the  manner  of  dispensing 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  329 

whisky.  In  a  Scotch  bar  one  never  sees  a  bottle — probably 
because  the  premises  would  soon  be  so  cluttered  up  with 
bottles  that  there  would  be  no  room  for  anything  else.  In 
a  Scotch  bar  all  the  whisky  is  draught  whisky.  The  whisky 
casks  usually  hang  high  above  the  bar  and  are  connected 
with  the  bar  by  pipes ;  so  when  a  cluster  of  boon  companions 
drifts  in  and  calls  for  mugs  of  Scotch,  the  barman  simply 
turns  a  spigot  and  lets  it  run. 

Once  a  man  is  soused  and  shows  it,  the  doors  of  all  pubs 
are  closed  to  him  until  he  has  lost  his  jag.  The  Scotch  pubs 
and  the  English  pubs  as  well  are  very  strict  on  this  point: 
for  the  publican  who  ignores  it  stands  an  excellent  chance  of 
losing  his  license.  When,  therefore,  the  old  prune-juice 
reaches  a  drinker's  brain  and  he  begins  to  make  noisy 
announcement  that  he  can  lick  each  or  all  of  his  fellow- 
drinkers,  he  finds  himself  seized  by  the  back  of  the  collar 
and  the  slack  of  the  pants  and  hurled  out  on  the  cold  bricks 
with  such  force  as  to  telescope  or  pulverize  several  of  them. 

I  do  not  wish  to  convey  the  impression  that  everybody 
who  walks  the  streets  of  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh  and  other 
Scotch  cities  on  Saturday  night  is  burdened  with  a  skinful 
of  hard  liquor.  The  population  of  Glasgow,  for  example,  i> 
one  million;  and  the  percentage  of  that  number  which  is 
drunk  on  any  given  night  is  very  small.  Even  on  Hog- 
manie,  which  is  the  Scotch  name  for  New  Year's  Eve,  when 
thousands  of  drunken  citizens  of  Glasgow  congregate  in  the 
Cross,  where  the  Trongate  and  the  Gallowgate  converge,  and 
pepper  the  statue  of  King  William  III  with  empty  bottles, 
the  percentage  of  drunks  to  the  rest  of  the  population  is 
small.  None  the  less,  I  repeat  that  Glasgow  is  the  drunk- 
ennest  city  in  the  world,  and  that  there  are  several  other 
Scotch  cities  which  crowd  it  close  for  premier  honors. 


330  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Conditions  of  this  sort  are  the  ones  that  the  people  of 
Scotland  fought  in  the  elections  of  November,  1920,  and 
the  ones  that  they  have  been  fighting  since  1853,  when  the 
State  of  Maine  passed  the  first  Local  Option  law.  In  1853 
the  people  of  England  and  Scotland  began  to  fight  for  a 
Local  Option  law  of  their  own,  based  on  the  Maine  law, 
which  should  give  them  the  right  to  express  an  opinion  as 
to  whether  or  not  the  community  should  be  saddled  with 
the  public-house.  England  is  still  fighting,  and  is  almost  as 
far  from  gaining  her  objective  as  she  was  in  1853.  Scotland, 
however,  was  luckier.  On  August  13,  1913,  the  Temper- 
ance (Scotland)  Act  was  passed  into  law  by  Parliament, 
after  a  fight  on  the  part  of  the  Scotch  Temperance  workers 
which  had  lasted  for  sixty  years.  The  Liquor  Interests, 
however,  fought  nearly  as  hard;  and  before  the  Act  was 
passed  they  had  slipped  so  many  knives  into  it  and  forced 
so  many  compromises  on  the  Temperance  advocates  that  it 
was  one  of  the  weakest,  palest,  sickliest  Temperance  acts 
that  ever  caused  a  brewer  to  burst  into  hilarious  and  derisive 
laughter. 

The  Act,  for  example,  gave  to  the  people  of  Scotland 
the  right  of  Local  Option  at  the  end  of  seven  years.  Though 
the  Act  became  a  law  in  August,  1913,  the  people  of  Scotland 
couldn't  vote  on  the  question  involved  in  the  law  until 
November,  1920.  Thus  the  brewers  and  the  distillers  and 
the  public-house  owners  had  seven  years  of  grace  in  which 
to  make  their  fortunes  if  they  had  not  already  done  so,  or 
to  change  their  occupations  if  they  were  sufficiently  foolish 
to  think  that  the  Act  would  ever  result  in  putting  any 
barkeepers  or  distillers  or  brewers  out  of  business. 

The  Act  provided  that  when  voting-time  finally  arrived, 
no  voting  area  could  vote  itself  no  license  by  a  bare  majority. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  331 

Unless  fifty-five  per  cent,  of  the  voters  voted  for  no  license, 
the  area  remained  wet  Moreover,  the  fifty-five  per  cent, 
must  represent  at  least  thirty- five  per  cent,  of  the  total  num- 
ber of  electors  in  the  voting  area.  In  other  words,  if  a  bare 
majority  of  a  district  voted  to  make  the  district  dry,  the  dis- 
trict remained  wet  in  spite  of  their  wishes.  This  very  thing 
happened  repeatedly  in  the  1920  elections.  If  the  Wet-and- 
Dry  portions  of  the  election  had  been  settled  by  a  majority 
vote,  twice  as  many  areas  would  have  gone  dry  as  actually 
went  In  using  the  word  "dry,"  I  am  using  it  in  the  Scotch 
sense,  which  allows  more  latitude  than  the  American  inter- 
pretation. 

The  Act  also  provided  that  towns  with  populations  less 
than  twenty-five  thousand  should  vote  as  a  unit;  but  that 
larger  towns  should  vote  by  wards,  and  that  no  ward  should 
be  affected  by  the  votes  in  other  wards.  This  situation  can 
be  better  realized  if  one  imagines  New  York  voting  for 
Prohibition  measures  under  such  an  act.  If  most  of  New 
York  were  to  vote  itself  dry  by  large  majorities,  but  if  a  few 
districts  refused  to  do  so,  those  few  districts  would  be 
unaffected  by  the  majority  vote  and  would  continue  to  dis- 
pense liquor  as  before.  Not  only  would  they  dispense 
liquor  as  before,  but  they  would  also  dispense  it  to  most  of 
the  rum-hounds  from  all  the  districts  which  had  gone  dry. 
Now,  an  optimistic  Prohibitionist  may  regard  such  a  state 
of  affairs  as  effectively  prohibitive ;  but  the  most  active  bar- 
flies of  America  would  regard  a  city  with  one  wet  ward  as  a 
haven  of  refuge  and  a  Paradise  of  Golden  Opportunity. 

Finally  the  Temperance  (Scotland)  Act  is  so  framed 
that  when  a  voting  area  goes  no-license,  the  licensing  of 
inns,  hotels  and  restaurants  for  the  sale  of  drink  is  not 
affected ;  and  there  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  in 


332  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

America — those,  by  the  way,  who  are  raving  the  loudest 
against  Prohibition — who  would  consider  that  a  city  whose 
inns,  hotels  and  restaurants  could  sell  spirituous  liquors  was 
as  wet  as,  if  not  wetter  than,  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

This  Act,  it  must  be  understood,  is  not  the  act  which 
the  Prohibitionists  and  the  Temperance  workers  wanted. 
They  wanted  a  very  much  stronger  act — one  which  would 
close  the  distilleries  and  hit  the  traveler  and  the  wealthy 
citizens  the  same  brutal  wallop  that  it  would  hit  the  work- 
ing man.  They  couldn't  get  it,  however.  Even  after  the 
Act  had  been  passed  into  law  in  1913,  the  Liquor  Interests 
claimed  that  it  was  a  dead  law  because  of  the  handicaps 
which  they  had  caused  to  be  imposed  on  the  Temperance 
workers.  It  is  not  a  dead  law,  though ;  and  it  has  frightened 
the  Scotch  distillers  and  brewers  and  the  Liquor  Trade  of 
the  United  Kingdom  generally  into  a  series  of  violent  con- 
vulsions. 

The  so-called  Prohibition  fight  in  Scotland — I  say  so- 
called  because  the  fight  was  not  on  Prohibition  as  America 
understands  it,  but  on  the  evils  of  the  public-house  and  the 
question  of  licensing  or  not  licensing  public-houses — was 
waged  on  the  Dry  side  by  the  Scottish  Permissive  Bill  and 
Temperance  Association  and  by  the  National  Citizens' 
Council.  The  Scottish  Permissive  Bill  and  Temperance 
Association  is  the  association  which  struggled  for  sixty 
years  to  gain  for  the  people  of  Scotland  the  right  to  vote 
on  the  sale  of  liquor  in  the  districts  in  which  they  live.  It 
is  the  organization  which  persuaded  Pussyfoot  Johnson  to 
come  to  Scotland  to  help  the  Dry  campaign  by  telling 
Scotchmen  about  the  good  things  that  Prohibition  had  done 
for  America.  The  National  Citizens  Council  is  a  compara- 
tively new  organization  formed,  according  to  its  officials. 


• 


n 
o 

: 

-r 

v 

| 

r 
Z 

•— 
o 
— 
1H 


4 'DRY'    AMERICA  HAS  RAISED  THE 

PRICE  OF  SUGAR  TO  ITS  PRESENT 

HIGH   FIGURE 

because  of  her  enormous  increase  in  the 

use   of   so-called    "temperance"   drinks 

and  candies. 

IF  THERE  IS  PROHIBITION 
IN  THIS  COUNTRY 

THE  PRICE  WILL  RISE 


and    with    many    other    household 

necessaries  will  become  a  luxury 

only  for  the  rich. 

V«T£  "NO  CHANGE" 


The   inscription  on  the  paper  bags  in   which   all  the  grocery  stores  of 
Scotland  sent  out  their  supplies  during  the  Prohibition  campaign. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  333 

"on  the  widest  basis  of  citizenship  for  the  purpose  of  edu- 
cating the  public  as  to  its  rights  and  duties  with  regard  to 
the  new  Act."  Among  the  officials  of  the  National  Citizens 
Council  are  such  representative  Scotchmen  as  Lord  Rowal- 
lan,  a  leading  Scottish  peer;  Sir  Joseph  Maclay,  the  shipping 
controller ;  William  Graham,  a  Labor  member  of  Parliament 
from  Edinburg;  Sir  Samuel  Chisholm,  Lord  Provost  of 
Glasgow;  Sir  Edward  Parrott,  a  member  of  Parliament 
from  Edinburgh  and  head  of  the  Nelson  printing  firm ;  and 
Bishop  Walpole  of  the  Scottish  Episcopal  Church. 

The  brains  and  heart  of  the  Wets — and  the  lungs  and 
limbs  and  viscera  as  well — is  the  Anti-Prohibition  Cam- 
paign Council.  This  council  is  composed  of  three  brewers, 
three  distillers,  three  liquor  retailers  and  a  secretary.  It 
represents  all  the  distillers  of  Scotland,  all  the  brewers,  all 
the  wine  merchants,  retailers  and  allied  traders.  Over  one 
hundred  associations — such,  for  example,  as  the  Whisky 
Association  (Scottish  Branch)1;  the  Brewers'  Association  of 
Scotland ;  the  Scottish  Licensed  Trade  Defense  Association ; 
the  Scottish  Licensed  Trade  Veto  Defense  Fund — are 
affiliated  with  the  council.  Through  the  Anti-Prohibition 
Campaign  Council  the  licensed  Liquor  Trade  of  Scotland 
fought  as  one  body;  and  it  is  a  safe  bet  that  if  the  Scottish 
Liquor  Trade  had  not  organized  as  it  did  and  fought  as  it 
did,  Scotland  to-day  would  be  so  spotted  with  Dry  areas 
that  if  they  were  shown  on  a  map  the  general  effect  would 
be  that  of  a  bad  case  of  measles. 

Each  of  the  one  hundred  affiliated  associations  of  the 
Anti-Prohibition  Campaign  Council  had  election  agents, 
competent  secretaries  and  large  working  committees  com- 
posed of  both  men  and  women.  In  every  voting  area  these 
associations  set  up  the  usual  Parliamentary  electoral  machine 


334  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

and  did  their  campaigning  under  the  guidance  of  the  Anti- 
Prohibition  Campaign  Council. 

The  headquarters  of  the  council,  in  Edinburgh,  had  a 
large  staff  of  workers,  enormous  masses  of  literature,  pos- 
ters and  propaganda  of  various  sorts,  and  a  corps  of  trained 
anti-Prohibition  speakers.  Fifty  of  these  anti- Prohibition 
speakers  were  ex-army  officers  who  were  trained  in  London 
for  their  particular  task  by  the  English  Liquor  Interests, 
who  maintained  a  school  for  the  purpose.  The  speakers,  the 
literature  and  the  posters  were  distributed  from  Edinburgh 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  reach  the  places  where  they  were 
most  needed  at  times  when  they  were  most  needed.  The 
machinery  of  the  Anti-Prohibition  Campaign  Council 
deserves  to  be  described  in  detail;  for  its  excellence  was 
responsible  for  the  overcoming  of  an  almost  overwhelming 
sentiment  in  Scotland  against  the  public-house  and  indis- 
criminate drinking. 

The  Anti-Prohibition  Campaign  Council  in  its  seven 
months  of  active  fighting  prior  to  and  during  the  election 
issued  more  than  twenty-five  million  pamphlets  dealing  with 
the  subjects  of  Prohibition  from  all  points  of  view — except, 
of  course,  those  points  favorable  to  Prohibition.  The 
figures  which  I  quote,  by  the  way,  were  given  to  me  by  the 
very  capable  and  industrious  secretary  of  the  Anti-Prohibi- 
tion Campaign  Council.  The  council  published  a  two-sheet 
newspaper  once  every  month,  and  distributed  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  copies  of  each  issue.  It  printed  and 
distributed  eighteen  million  bottle  labels,  and  saw  to  it  that 
no  bottle  containing  an  alcoholic  beverage  should  reach 
a  consumer  without  one  of  the  labels  pasted  on  it.  The 
sentiments  conveyed  by  these  labels  were  short  and  sweet, 
such  as : 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  335 

"Prohibition  destroys  Liberty :    Vote  No  Change." 
"Prohibition  means  more  Taxation :    Vote  No  Change." 
"Prohibition    increases    Cost    of    Living.      Vote    No 

Change." 

"Prohibition  is  'Dry'-Rot.    Vote  No  Change." 
"Prohibition  means  Unemployment.    Vote  No  Change." 
"Temperance  is  Strength;  Prohibition  is  Slavery.   Vote 

No  Change." 

"Prohibition  Robs  the  Worker,  but  will  not  empty  the 

Rich  Man's  Cellar.    Vote  No  Change." 

It  printed  eight  million  cards  which  were  slipped  into 
the  hands  of  people  on  the  streets  by  Wet  workers.  On 
these  cards  were  printed  select  anti-Prohibition  remarks  by 
great  writers.  Samples  that  were  given  to  me  quote  John 
Stuart  Mill  to  the  effect  that  so  monstrous  a  principle  as 
Prohibition  is  far  more  dangerous  than  any  single  interfer- 
ence with  liberty;  there  is  no  violation  of  liberty  which  it 
would  not  justify. 

This  quotation  is  probably  correct,  though  both  the 
Wets  and  the  Drys  in  Scotland  have  an  unpleasant  habit  of 
quoting  the  same  people  to  prove  their  cases.  The  Wets 
quote  Mill  to  show  that  Prohibition  is  a  horrible  infringe- 
ment on  liberty;  the  Drys  quote  him  to  show  exactly  the 
opposite.  The  Wets  quote  Abraham  Lincoln  to  show  that 
they  are  being  abused:  the  Drys  quote  Abraham  Lincoln 
to  show  that  the  suppression  of  the  Liquor  Traffic  was  a 
thing  which  he  ardently  hoped  to  accomplish  as  the  crown- 
ing feat  of  his  career.  The  Wets  quote  Sam  Gompers  and 
so  do  the  Drys.  Both  of  them  quote  Theodore  Roosevelt  in 
support  of  their  arguments;  and  each  side  claims  Oliver 
Cromwell  and  quotes  him  extensively. 

The    Anti-Prohibition    Campaign    Council    purchased 


336  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

two  million  five  hundred  thousand  paper  bags  in  two  sizes 
and  issued  them  to  grocers  all  over  Scotland.  Grocers  sell 
bottled  goods  and  the  Temperance  (Scotland)  Act  affects 
them,  so  that  they  are  glad  to  use  all  the  bags  that  are 
given  them.  On  one  side  of  each  bag  was  printed : 

"To  Housewives.  'Dry'  America  has  raised  the  price 
of  sugar  to  its  present  high  figure  because  of  her  enormous 
increase  in  the  use  of  so-called  'temperance'  drinks  and 
candies.  If  there  is  Prohibition  in  this  country  the  price 
will  rise  still  higher  and  with  many  other  household  neces- 
sities will  become  a  luxury  only  for  the  rich.  Vote  No 
Change." 

This  bag,  which  was  carried  into  every  home  in  Scot- 
land before  the  campaign  was  over,  was  excellent  propa- 
ganda; and  the  propaganda  was  damaged  very  little  by  the 
fact  that  sugar,  during  the  last  part  of  the  campaign,  was 
considerably  lower  in  price  in  America  than  it  was  in  Eng- 
land. 

The  council  distributed  two  hundred  and  sixty  thousand 
big  posters  limited  to  printing,  sixty  thousand  colored  pic- 
ture posters,  and  twenty  thousand  enormous  sixteen-sheet 
colored  posters  of  the  same  designs  as  the  sixty  thousand 
smaller  colored  ones.  Every  hotel,  public-house  and  licensed 
grocery  covered  its  windows  with  the  council's  posters ;  and 
in  many  cases  the  entire  front  of  a  public-house  would  be 
covered  so  that  no  house  could  be  seen.  A  cartoon  in  an 
Edinburgh  paper  showed  two  Scotchmen  standing  in  front 
of  a  mass  of  posters  on  a  busy  corner.  "Whaur's  the  pub, 
Tarn?"  one  of  them  is  asking — the  inference  being  that 
every  public-house  completely  screened  itself  with  posters. 
Every  bill-board  and  hoarding  in  Scotland  was  covered  with 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  337 

these  posters  for  six  months  before  the  election.  There  were 
Wet  posters  in  every  railway  station  in  the  country.  The 
council  contracted  with  street-car  companies,  so  that  the 
cars  carried  strip-posters  twenty  feet  in  length  along  their 
sides.  They  contracted  with  moving-picture  houses  so  that 
throughout  every  afternoon  and  evening  every  silver  screen 
in  the  land  warned  the  people  against  the  perils  of  Prohibi- 
tion. Wet  slogans  appeared  on  the  football  result  cards 
which  hang  in  all  public  places,  and  on  the  programs  of  all 
theaters  and  athletic  events.  At  big  football  parks  the 
council  painted  anti-Prohibition  signs  two  hundred  feet  long 
and  thirty  feet  deep  on  the  tops  of  grandstands — and  Scotch 
football  parks  hold  as  many  as  one  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  people.  Wherever  it  could  rent  the  end  of  a 
house  or  a  private  fence  it  painted  thereon  a  powerful  blast 
against  Prohibition. 

The  council  carried  on  a  seven-months  advertising  cam- 
paign in  all  the  important  newspapers  in  Scotland,  a  house- 
to-house  campaign  for  distributing  anti-Prohibition  litera- 
ture, and  a  personal  canvass  of  all  electors.  It  held  meetings 
in  many  places  each  day  from  the  middle  of  August  to  the 
end  of  November;  and  for  speakers  at  these  meetings  it 
provided  members  of  Parliament,  clergymen,  barristers, 
ex-members  of  Parliament  and  the  ex-army  officer  of 
whom  I  have  already  spoken.  These  ex-officers  were 
usually  spoken  of  as  "fighting  a  new  battle  for  freedom  and 
liberty."  They  were  also  fighting  for  an  excellent  salary. 

There  is  no  question  but  that  the  Dry  Interests  would 
have  been  far  more  successful  if  the  Wet  campaign  had  been 
a  little  weaker  or  had  started  a  little  later.  The  people  of 
Scotland  were  deeply  aware  of  the  evils  of  drink  and  wanted 
to  stamp  them  out.  But  the  assurance  on  the  part  of  the 


338  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Wets  that  Prohibition  meant  increased  taxation  and  increase 
in  the  price  of  necessaries  of  life  set  a  lot  of  the  housewives 
to  wabbling;  and  when  they  wabbled,  their  men-folk 
wabbled — wiffle-waffled,  as  the  Scotch  say.  The  Drys 
assured  me  that  if  the  elections  could  have  taken  place  three 
months  earlier,  they  would  have  won  some  striking  victories. 
Some  of  the  Wet  leaders  confirmed  this  statement. 

The  Drys  could  not  counteract  the  Wet  advertising  cam- 
paign because  their  resources  were  much  smaller  than  those 
of  the  Wets  and  also  because  they  were  unable  to  get  their 
propaganda  into  the  voters'  hands  with  the  same  surety. 
They  could  not,  for  example,  reach  the  housewives  who  car- 
ried home  provisions  from  the  groceries  in  paper  bags  which 
assured  them  that  Prohibition  would  send  the  price  of  sugar 
beyond  their  reach.  The  grocers,  being  Wets  by  nature  of 
their  business,  would  throw  all  possible  obstacles  in  the  path 
of  those  who  attempted  to  show  that  this  statement  was 
untrue.  The  Drys  couldn't  get  their  propaganda  into  the 
pubs  and  so  reach  the  working  men.  At  the  lowest  esti- 
mate, the  cost  of  the  Wet  campaign  was  ten  times  the  cost  of 
the  Dry  campaign.  The  Wets  probably  spent  much  more 
than  ten  times  as  much  as  the  Drys,  because  a  majority  of 
the  Prohibitionists  and  Temperance  workers  do  their  work 
for  love  or  in  the  interests  of  humanity ;  whereas  I  have  never 
happened  to  encounter  an  active  worker  in  the  anti-Prohibi- 
tion cause  who  was  working  for  anything  except  his  bank 
account. 

The  campaign  of  the  No-License  workers — the  Scottish 
Permissive  Bill  and  Temperance  Association  and  the  Na- 
tional Citizens'  Council — was  an  educative  campaign  carried 
on  by  means  of  posters,  pamphlets,  a  fortnightly  newspaper, 
a  few  newspaper  advertisements  and  a  number  of  speakers. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  339 

Pussyfoot  Johnson,  on  the  invitation  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Scottish  Permissive  Bill  and  Temperance  Association,  spoke 
in  behalf  of  No  License  in  all  parts  of  Scotland.  One  other 
American  speaker  participated  in  the  campaign;  and  these 
two  speakers  comprised  the  "horde  of  Yankee  agitators"  to 
which  the  Wets  made  such  frequent  reference. 

The  Drys  set  themselves  to  prove — and  did  prove  conclu- 
sively and  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  persons  not  congenital 
nit-wits,  not  slaves  to  the  drink  habit,  and  not  financially 
interested  in  the  Liquor  Trade — that  drink  was  the  cause  of 
an  undue  amount  of  crime,  disease,  poverty,  bad  housing 
conditions  and  national  inefficiency.  • 

The  Wets  set  themselves  to  prove  that  the  contentions 
of  the  Drys  were  not  true,  and  to  convince  the  people  of 
Scotland  that  they  were  voting  on  Prohibition  instead  of  on 
a  No-License  resolution  which  was  no  more  akin  to  Prohi- 
bition than  beefsteak  is  akin  to  a  cheese  omelette.  They 
clouded  the  issues  with  extreme  skill;  and  they  made  innu- 
merable statements  with  just  enough  basis  of  fact  to  enable 
a  determined  quibbler  to  defend  them  against  the  accusa- 
tion of  being  liars — such  statements,  for  example,  as  that 
Bolshevism  in  Russia  was  the  result  of  Prohibition,  and 
that  Prohibition  in  America  was  the  reason  for  the  high 
price  of  sugar  in  the  late  summer  of  1920. 

One  of  the  spots  at  which  the  Wets  kept  hammering  in 
their  propaganda  was  the  connection  between  America  and 
the  No-License  movement  in  Scotland.  By  stretching  the 
facts  the  Wets  were  able  to  convey  to  the  bulk  of  the  Scotch 
people  the  belief  that  America  was  officially  interested  in 
thrusting  Prohibition  on  them,  and  that  she  had  some  secret 
advantage  to  gain  by  so  doing.  The  Wets  could  prove  in 
court,  with  every  evidence  of  injured  innocence,  that  their 


340  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

posters  have  never  said  such  things  in  so  many  words ;  but 
their  posters  and  their  pamphlets  conveyed  that  impression 
and  stirred  up  a  tremendous  anti-American  sentiment  among 
the  working  classes.  One  Wet  poster,  for  example,  shows  a 
giant  British  workman  lying  bound  on  the  shores  of  Scot- 
land, while  a  small  figure  by  his  side  waves  an  American 
flag.  From  the  distant  sky-line  of  New  York,  a  huge  stream 
of  dope-packages,  patent-medicine  bottles  and  chewing-gum 
boxes  is  flying  toward  Britain's  shores.  "Are  you  going  to 
allow  British  Commerce,  British  Labour  and  your  own  per- 
sonal liberty  to  be  bound  and  gagged  ?"  asks  this  poster. 

A  hand-bill,  headed  "The  American  Pussyfooters' 
Intrusion,"  warns  all  good  Scotchmen  not  to  get  chummy 
with  the  American  adventurers.  Since  the  invaders  are 
classed  by  suggestion  with  Germans,  it  is  to  be  assumed  that 
the  Wets  wish  their  adherents  to  tap  the  Americans  lightly 
on  the  heads  with  trench-clubs  or  bung-starters  by  way  of 
greeting. 

"You  remember,"  says  this  amiable  little  document,  "the 
German  efforts  at  peaceful  penetration  and  what  it  cost  you 
to  shake  the  country  free  of  it  ? 

"Do  you  wish  to  take  another  dose  of  peaceful  penetra- 
tion from  adventurers  and  cranks  from  another  foreign 
nation  ? 

"The  American  Pussyfooters  are  here  to  try  some  more 
peaceful  penetration  upon  you. 

"They  brag  that  they  are  going  to  'butt  in'  at  your  elec- 
tions to  influence  politicians  and  the  newspapers,  and  to 
make  teetotalers  of  us  all  by  promoting  the  prohibition  of 
the  manufacture  and  sale  of  all  alcoholic  liquors. 

"They  boast  that  they  are  paid  highly  for  the  job  out  of 
funds  collected  principally  from  American  capitalists. 

"This  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  intrusion.    There  are 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  341 

other  prohibition  movements  on  foot  in  America — the  pro- 
hibition of  smoking,  theatres,  dancing,  and  of  Sunday 
recreation. 

"American  adventurers  are  coming-  over  here  to  earn  a 
living  by  agitating  to  filch  more  of  your  liberties  from  you, 
and  so  your  freedom  may  be  stolen  bit  by  bit. 

"Turn  down  this  prohibitionist  business  at  once,  and  so 
put  an  end  to  this  dangerous  interference  in  your  domestic 
affairs. 

"It  is  the  act  of  a  traitor  for  any  Britisher  to  encourage 
or  tolerate  these  American  prohibitionists. 

"Aliens  have  no  right  to  put  us  to  the  trouble  of  defend- 
ing liberties  we  have  enjoyed  for  centuries. 

"VOTE  NO  CHANGE." 

The  Anti-Prohibition  Journal,  to  quote  another  example, 
mentioned  that  the  United  States  Internal  Revenue  Board 
was  considering  the  seizing  and  selling  of  all  foreign  ships 
that  violate  the  Prohibition  law,  and  then  quoted  an  editorial 
from  the  Dundee  Advertiser  which  stated  that  the  current 
American  patriotic  creed  is  the  possession  of  the  biggest 
mercantile  marine  in  the  world,  and  that  to  confiscate 
foreign  ships  for  "wetness"  would  be  "just  the  kind  of 
measure  to  appeal  to  our  cousins,  who  are  great  altruists — 
especially  when  altruism  can  be  combined  with  good  busi- 
ness for  themselves." 

A  newspaper  advertisement  two  columns  wide  and  a 
page  deep,  put  out  by  the  Wets,  attacked  the  anti-liquor 
forces  in  the*  following  detached  and  restrained  manner : 

"We  don-'t  want  the  marks  of  the  Pussyfoot  all  over 
Scotland ! 

"Without  any  assistance  from  Yankee  faddists  and 
fanatics,  Scotsmen  have  succeeded  in  making  a  splendid 
mark  in  every  field  of  human  endeavour,  at  home  and 
abroad. 


342  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

"Their  achievements  are  the  clearest  proof  that  they 
know  how  to  look  after  themselves  so  as  to  secure  the  best 
results. 

"They  are  the  most  competent  judges  to  decide  what 
individual  and  social  habits  are  most  suited  to  their  national 
character,  to  their  environment  and  to  the  development  of 
their  capacities. 

"They  have  claimed,  fought  for  and  secured  the  right  to 
be  free  and  independent,  both  as  Scotsmen  and  as  individ- 
ual human  beings. 

"Are  they  now  to  be  ruled,  regulated  and  regimented  by 
prohibitionists  infected  by  a  foreign  germ?  Will  the  inde- 
pendent Scotsman  allow  himself  to  be  made  over  according 
to  an  American  pattern  and  placed  under  nursery  govern- 
ment by  a  grandmotherly  officialdom? 

"In  the  matter  now  at  issue — that  of  their  freedom  to 
drink  what  they  choose — will  they  submit  to  be  treated  as 
though  they  were  a  half  crazy  collection  of  inebriates  ?" 

The  advertisement  winds  up  with  a  statement  in  large 
black  capital  letters  declaring  that  "We  can  keep  our  own 
house  in  order." 

This  statement  is  not  an  unreasonable  one.  The  people 
of  any  nation  are  easily  aroused  against  the  reformers  from 
another  nation,  irrespective  of  the  merits  of  the  reform 
measures  which  they  may  be  advocating.  The  most  potent 
ammunition  possessed  by  the  Wet  forces  was  their  claim  of 
American  interference.  The  Drys  in  any  country  have 
enough  arguments  on  their  side  to  defeat  the  Liquor  Inter- 
ests if  the  facts  are  properly  presented  and  distributed ;  for 
there  are  no  sound  arguments  in  favor  of  drink.  The  Drys, 
therefore,  handicap  themselves  when  they  import  speakers 
from  a  foreign  country  and  give  the  Wets  an  opportunity  to 
cloud  the  issue  by  advertisements  such  as  the  one  I  have 
quoted — advertisements  which  cause  the  man  in  the  street 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  343 

to  growl  that  he  isn't  going  to  have  any  blooming  American 
run  his  affairs. 

If  the  Anti-Saloon  League  of  America  wishes  to  assist 
the  Liquor  Interests  in  their  fight  against  the  Temperance 
people  in  England  and  Scotland,  it  can  best  do  so  by  con- 
tinuing to  allow  American  speakers  to  go  to  Great  Britain, 
and  by  agitating  in  America  for  a  Puritan  Sunday,  the 
abolition  of  smoking  and  lower  heels  on  women's  shoes — 
as  the  Scotch  Wets  say  it  is  doing.  These  are  points  that 
stir  up  more  antagonism  to  the  Prohibition  movement  in 
Scotland  and  England  than  all  the  other  Wet  arguments 
put  together. 

Since  America  is  the  largest  Prohibition  country  in  the 
world,  both  the  Wets  and  the  Drys  turned  to  America  to 
prove  their  contentions.  All  of  the  evidence  brought  from 
America  by  the  Drys  tended  to  show  that  Prohibition  has 
made  the  United  States  into  an  ideal  country  where  life  is 
one  grand  sweet  song.  The  Wets,  however,  tapped  a  very 
different  source  of  information,  and  all  of  their  reports 
indicated  clearly  that  Prohibition  had  tremendously 
increased  crime,  law-breaking,  vice,  Bolshevism,  anarchy 
and  other  unpleasant  matters. 

The  Dry  evidence  starts  with  such  glittering  words  as 
those  of  a  Louisville,  Kentucky,  minister,  who  declares  com- 
prehensively and  rhapsodically  that  "life  in  Kentucky  is  the 
nearest  tiling  to  Heaven  since  the  arrival  of  Prohibition." 
The  Dry  propaganda  then  goes  on  to  quote  the  governors  of 
states,  chiefs  of  police,  secretaries  of  labor  organizations, 
wardens  of  jails  and  presumably  unbiased  observers  in 
America  to  the  effect  that  the  benefits  of  Prohibition  have 
been  incalculable,  and  that  sentiment  in  America  is  almost 
unanimous  against  returning  to  the  pre-Prohibition  days. 


344  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Prohibition  in  America,  according  to  the  Drys,  is  a  magnifi- 
cent and  inspiring  success. 

The  Wet  evidence  brings  forward  voluminous  reports  of 
illegal  traffic  in  liquor  in  America  and  the  failure  of  the 
Prohibition  law  to  prohibit,  of  the  increase  in  crime  and  the 
dope  evil,  of  the  growing  number  of  drunks  which  infest  the 
streets  of  leading  American  cities,  and  of  an  almost  unani- 
mous sentiment  against  Prohibition.  The  Wet  evidence 
quotes  influential  Americans  to  the  effect  that  the  Dry  law 
in  America  is  doomed.  Prohibition  in  America,  according 
to  the  Wets,  is  an  unparalleled  and  overwhelming  failure, 
and,  instead  of  making  the  country  into  a  near-Heaven,  it 
has  made  it  into  a  hell  of  a  place. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  that  both  the  Wets 
and  the  Drys  are  correct  in  most  of  their  contentions.  Pro- 
hibition has  been  an  unmixed  blessing  for  many  sections  of 
America;  and  it  is  also  giving  rise  to  an  enormous  amount 
of  law-breaking,  bootlegging,  whisky-running  and  home- 
brewing  and  distilling.  But  even  the  average  great  Ameri- 
can boob  who  connives  at  illegality  by  separating  himself 
from  a  ten-dollar  bill  in  return  for  about  seventy-five  cents' 
worth  of  fire-water  will,  when  pressed,  admit  that  the 
United  States  without  the  saloon  is  a  better  place  in  which 
to  live,  so  far  as  most  people  are  concerned,  than  it  was  when 
the 'saloon  was  dispensing  jags,  headaches  and  hooch  in 
equal  proportions.  Students  of  the  American  temperament 
say  that  the  wide-spread  making  of  home-brews  will  grad- 
ually begin  to  pall  on  the  makers  as  they  continue  to  con- 
template the  awful  mess  that  they  make  of  their  kitchens 
and  the  meager  results  which  they  get  in  return.  These 
same  students  declare  that  the  people  of  America  go  in 
whole-heartedly  for  things — rioting,  for  example,  and 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  345 

drinking  and  graft  and  misgovernment ;  and  when  they  are 
through  going  in  for  them,  they  are  through  in  a  whole- 
hearted manner.  The  time  to  judge  the  effects  of  Prohibi- 
tion on  America,  say  the  students,  is  in  1925  or  1930  or 
whenever  it  is  that  our  most  interesting  circles  cease  to 
think  it  smart  to  restrict  their  dinner  table  conversations  to 
the  subject  of  manufacturing  and  obtaining  liquor. 

The  Wets  shrieked  and  tore  their  hair  and  frothed  at  the 
mouth  in  rage  because  of  Pussyfoot  Johnson's  presence  in 
Scotland;  and  I  have  already  reproduced  a  few  of  their 
more  poignant  ululations  against  American  intervention  in 
their  private  hooch  problems.  They  bawled  deafeningly 
that  Scotsmen  "are  the  most  competent  judges  to  decide 
what  individual  and  social  habits  are  most  suited  to  their 
national  character,  to  their  environment  and  to  the  develop- 
ment of  their  capacities" — and  I  wish  to  interject  at  this 
point  the  observation  that  the  individual  habits  of  Scotsmen 
at  this  writing  are  certainly  suited  to  the  development  of 
greater  capacities  than  I  have  ever  encountered  even  in  a 
wide  experience  with  the  most  capacious  capacities  in  Bos- 
ton political  circles,  which  possess  some  of  the  snappiest  and 
most  commodious  capacities  known  to  science.  And  then, 
in  spite  of  their  shriekings  and  their  bawlings  and  their  evi- 
dent nausea  at  the  unspeakable  lowness  of  the  Drys  in 
importing  an  American  speaker,  the  Wets  imported  two 
American  speakers  of  their  own. 

The  principal  American  speaker  on  behalf  of  the  Wets 
was  C.  A.  Windle,  of  Chicago,  of  whom  The  Anti-Prohi- 
bition Journal  said,  "The  Honorable  C.  A.  Windle  is 
recognized  as  the  most  brilliant  debater  in  America.  His 
command  of  language,  ovenvhelming  personality  and  abso- 
lute sincerity  make  him  at  once  a  convincing  and  fascinating 


346  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

speaker."  The  other  was  Mrs.  Minona  S.  Jones,  also  of 
Chicago;  and  of  Mrs.  Jones  The  Anti-Prohibition  Journal 
declared  that,  "She  has  done  yeoman  service  for  the  cause  of 
freedom  and  liberty  in  America  and  understands  the  Pro- 
hibition question  from  beginning  to  end."  When  The  Anti- 
Prohibition  Journal  refers  to  "the  cause  of  freedom  and 
liberty  in  America,"  it  is  not  speaking  of  the  American 
Revolution  or  the  Civil  War,  as  one  might  suppose,  but  of 
the  cause  of  Old  John  B.  Booze. 

The  Honorable  C.  A.  Windle,  in  the  parlance  of  the  Big 
Time  circuit,  knocked  'em  off  their  chairs ;  and  when  he  got 
through  telling  about  the  awful  results  of  Prohibition  in 
America,  strong  men  felt  moved  to  doff  their  coats  and  vests 
in  anguish,  while  women  almost  wept  to  think  that  any  one 
could  be  so  cruel  as  to  deprive  them  of  their  grog.  One  of 
Mr.  Windle's  most  frequently-quoted  statements  was  that 
"the  only  three  places  where  Prohibition  has  proved  to  be 
a  success  are  the  penitentiary,  Turkey  and  hell."  Mr.  Win- 
die's  statement  was  taken  at  its  face  value,  though  he  never 
produced  figures  either  on  hell,  Turkey,  or  the  penitentiary. 

Harry  Earnshaw,  Secretary  of  the  Anti-Prohibition 
Campaign  Council,  was  particularly  anxious  that  I  should 
give  Mr.  Windle  a  full  measure  of  credit  for  the  1920 
defeat  in  Scotland  of  the  Prohibition  forces;  and  I  am  glad 
to  comply  with  Mr.  Earnshaw's  request.  "Windle,"  said 
Mr.  Earnshaw,  "was  the  most  prominent  single  factor  in 
our  defeat  of  the  Drys.  We  permitted  him  to  be  our  banner- 
bearer,  or  standard-bearer,  as  you  call  it  in  America.  What 
I  mean,  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  give  Windle  too  much 
praise.  He  undoubtedly  opened  the  eyes  of  the  Scottish 
people  on  the  evils  of  Prohibition.  It  is  the  consensus  of 
opinion  in  Scotland  that  there  isn't  a  man  living  who  is 
capable  of  standing  on  a  platform  and  debating  the  matter 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  347 

with  him.     He  is  the  finest  soldier  that  ever  fought  in  any 
campaign.    I  got  him  accidentally,  but  it  was  the  best  d; 
work  that  I  ever  did." 

Mr.  Winclle  for  the  Wets  and  Mr.  Pussyfoot  Johnson 
for  the  Drys  had  some  violent  differences  of  opinion  as  the 
Scottish  campaign  neared  an  end ;  and  the  most  violent  alter- 
cation arose  over  the  question  of  crime  in  Chicago.  Briefly, 
Mr.  Windle  claimed  that  murder  increased  in  Chicago  dur- 
ing the  first  year  of  Prohibition.  Mr.  Johnson  promptly 
said  that  Mr.  Windle  was  elected  to  the  Ananias  Club  by 
acclamation.  Mr.  Johnson  said  that  there  was  less  murder 
in  Chicago  during  the  first  year  of  Prohibition.  Mr.  Windle 
threw  aspersions  on  Mr.  Johnson's  veracity  and  put  up  a 
thousand  pounds  as  a  wager  that  Mr.  Johnson  couldn't  prove 
what  he  said.  Mr.  Johnson  discovered  that  Mr.  W'indle 
was  including  in  his  figures  the  persons  killed  during  the 
Chicago  race  riots.  This,  he  claimed,  wasn't  fair.  Mr. 
Windle  continued  to  declare  coldly  that  Mr.  Johnson  could 
not  prove  what  he  said  about  the  decrease  of  murder  in 
Chicago.  This  is  one  of  those  delicate  questions  which 
disrupt  families  and  cause  spite  fences  to  be  built.  The 
people  of  America,  of  course,  can  see  at  once  who  was  right, 
just  as  did  the  people  of  Scotland.  Those  who  want  tin- 
Eighteenth  Amendment  to  die  a  sudden  but  painful  death 
will  see  probably  that  Mr.  Windle  was  right;  while  those 
who  wish  America  to  stay  dry— or  as  dry  as  possible — will 
at  once  perceive  that  Mr.  Johnson  was  correct. 

An  interesting  statement  made  by  Mr.  Windle  was 
crossed  over  at  a  meeting  in  Dundee.  He  said  that  if  Pro- 
hibition had  been  popular  in  America,  President  Harding, 
who  had  admitted  that  he  owned  breweries,  would  never 
have  been  elected  with  a  majority  of  six  million  votes. 

So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  run  down  this  statement, 


348  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

President  Harding  in  the  old  Marion  printing1  days  once 
printed  some  advertising  for  a  Marion  brewery.  Being 
short  of  money,  the  brewery  handed  out  two  shares  of  its 
stock  in  payment.  Therefore  President  Harding  owned 
breweries.  Following  the  same  line  of  reasoning,  a  man 
who  inherits  two  shares  of  International  Mercantile  Marine 
stock  is  the  owner  of  several  ocean  liners. 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  quoting  of  American  authori- 
ties in  the  campaign  by  both  sides ;  and  frequently  quotations 
ascribed  to  the  same  man  by  both  sides  were  in  direct  opposi- 
tion to  each  other.  Mr.  Earnshaw  of  the  Wets,  for  example, 
quoted  Bird  S.  Coler,  Commissioner  of  Public  Charities  in 
New  York,  as  saying  on  August  18,  1920,  that  the  number 
of  cases  for  alcoholic  treatment  in  Bellevue  Hospital,  New 
York,  equaled  those  of  pre-Prohibition  days.  Mr.  Johnson, 
for  the  Drys,  quoted  a  letter  from  Mr.  Coler,  dated  August 
26,  1920,  to  show  that  the  general  medical  superintendent  of 
the  same  hospital  reported  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
alcoholic  patients  per  month  during  the  first  eight  months 
of  1920  as  against  a  thousand  a  month  prior  to  1916.  It  is 
fairly  obvious,  therefore,  that  somebody  was  indulging  in 
some  ground  and  lofty  prevarication,  and  that  the  poor 
voter  who  was  attempting  to  get  at  the  truth  of  the  matter 
would,  after  reading  the  claims  of  both  sides,  find  his  brain 
reduced  to  the  general  texture  of  corned  beef  hash. 

The  most  effective  poster  used  by  the  Wet  forces  was  a 
brilliantly  colored  affair  decorated  with  a  picture  of  Sam 
Gompers.  This,  in  two  sizes,— one  a  single-sheet  poster  and 
one  a  sixteen-sheet  poster — was  plastered  all  over  Scotland. 
It  was  headed  "America  and  Prohibition :  The  warning  of 
'The  Little  Giant'  of  organized  Labor  in  America."  And 
it  ran  on  in  the  following  chaste  phrases : 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  349 

"Sam  Gompers,  President  of  the  A.  F.  of  L.  says:  'I 
have  always  contended  that  foisting  Prohibition  on  this 
country  was  a  blunder — a  blunder  charged  with  danger 
and  loaded  with  disastrous  probabilities 

"  'Prohibition  has  risked  wrecking  the  social  and 
economic  fabric  of  the  nation 

"  'We  have  invaded  the  habits  of  the  working  man — we 
have  upset  the  man  and  unsettled  him 

'  'He  meets  other  men  restless  and  discontented  like 
himself — they  rub  together  their  grievances  and  there  are 
sparks,  sometimes  fire 

'  'I  believe  that  Bolshevism  in  Russia  began  in  Prohibi- 
tion   

"  'Is  Prohibition  worth  such  a  price?' ' 

The  campaign  provided  a  controversial  debauch  for 
hardened  Scotch  controversialists ;  and  for  weeks  prior  to  the 
elections  the  newspapers  were  sprinkled  with  letters  from 
Wets  and  Drys,  in  which  each  side  rammed  dirks  into  each 
other  up  to  the  hilt  until  the  weary  editor,  in  the  Scotch 
fashion,  wrote  across  the  bottom  of  a  letter  "This  corre- 
spondence is  now  closed." 

The  Wets  had  eleven  stock  arguments  as  to  why  the 
Scotch  voters  should  not  vote  for  the  abolition  of  public- 
house  licenses. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  men  can  not  be  made  sober  by 
act  of  Parliament. 

The  Drys  replied  that  the  act  of  Parliament  which  cut 
down  the  production  and  sale  of  whisky  and  beer  during 
the  war  reduced  convictions  for  drunkenness  in  England. 
Scotland  and  Wales  from  223,000  in  1913  to  36,000  in  1918. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  the  provisions  of  the  Temperance 
act  would  merely  drive  the  Liquor  Trade  out  of  one  area 
and  leave  it  in  another. 


350  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

The  Drys  replied  that  conditions  would  promptly  become 
so  bad  in  the  remaining  Wet  areas  that  they  would  vote  dry 
at  the  next  elections  for  self-protection. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  the  better-class  districts  would 
go  dry;  while  the  slums,  which  needed  dryness  most,  would 
never  accept  it. 

The  Drys  replied  that  the  slums  would  eventually  see 
that  it  was  to  their  interests  and  the  interests  of  their  chil- 
dren to  go  dry. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  districts  which  voted  out  liquor 
would  vote  it  in  again. 

The  Drys  replied  by  producing  figures  from  the  United 
States  and  Canada  to  prove  that  districts  which  once  went 
dry  stayed  dry. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  hardship  would  be  inflicted  on 
liquor  sellers  and  thousands  deprived  of  a  living. 

The  Drys  replied  by  quoting  American  and  Canadian 
bartenders  to  the  effect  that  Prohibition  was  the  best  thing 
that  ever  happened  to  them. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  to  vote  Scotland  dry  would  injure 
trade  and  commerce. 

The  Drys  replied  that  in  America  and  Canada,  Prohibi- 
tion had  caused  drink  money  to  flow  to  retail  stores  for 
clothing  and  food  for  families  previously  neglected. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  the  abolition  of  the  Liquor  Trade 
would  flood  the  labor  market  and  depress  the  wages  of  all 
workers. 

The  Drys  replied  that  other  and  better  trades  would  rise 
on  the  Liquor  Trade's  ruins. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  Prohibition  doesn't  prohibit. 

The  Drys  replied  that  it  does  prohibit. 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  35 1 

The  Wets  claimed  that  the  State  would  lose  its  revenue 
and  that  taxes  would  rise. 

The  Drys  replied  that  the  State  spends  more  each  year 
to  repair  the  evils  caused  by  drink  than  it  takes  in  revenue. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  Prohibition  is  an  unwarrantable 
interference  with  personal  liberty. 

The  Drys  replied  that  nobody  can  have  a  personal  liberty 
which  runs  contrary  to  the  well-being  of  the  community. 
No  man  has  liberty  to  murder  or  steal ;  and  no  more  should 
he  have  liberty  to  subject  himself  and  his  children  to  the 
tyranny  of  drink. 

The  Wets  claimed  that  the  Temperance  (Scotland)  Act 
is  a  rank  piece  of  class  legislation,  taking  drink  from  the 
working  man  but  not  interfering  with  the  rich. 

The  Drys  replied  that  they  had  been  forced  to  accept  the 
terms  of  the  Act  in  order  to  get  any  act  at  all,  and  that  any 
measure  which  reduced  the  Liquor  Traffic  was  a  good 
measure. 

It  was  my  impression,  after  dragging  through  most  of 
Western  Europe  the  trunkful  of  Prohibition  and  Anti-Pro- 
hibition propaganda  that  was  forced  on  me  in  Scotland — 
propaganda,  by  the  way,  which  caused  me  to  be  regarded 
with  deep  suspicion  in  the  hotels  of  such  noticeably  non- 
Puritanical  centers  as  Paris  and  Monte  Carlo — it  was  my 
impression,  I  repeat,  that  the  Wets  and  the  Drys  got  out 
enough  propaganda  to  make  fifty-seven  volumes  of  the  size 
of  The  Bartenders'  Guide;  and  I  am  reasonably  certain  that 
one  of  the  two  parties  was  responsible  for  statements  of  a 
type  that  will  keep  the  Recording  Angel  busy  with  his  add- 
ing machine  until  next  August. 

Burdened  with  this  mass  of  information  and  misinforma- 
tion, then,  the  men  and  women  of  Scotland  went  to  the 


352  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

polls,  not  on  one  day  but  on  scattered  days  through  Novem- 
ber and  part  of  December,  1920.  The  sentiment  against  the 
continuation  of  existing  drinking  conditions  had  been  very 
strong;  and  the  Scottish  Labor  Party  was  officially  com- 
mitted to  a  No-License  policy.  In  spite  of  this,  the  Drys 
were  badly  defeated. 

A  voter  could  use  his  vote  in  three  ways:  for  a  No- 
Change  Resolution,  which  meant  that  public-house  licenses 
would  stay  as  they  were;  for  a  Limiting  Resolution,  which 
meant  that  licenses  would  be  reduced  by  one-quarter;  and 
for  a  No-License  Resolution,  which  meant  that  all  licenses 
in  the  area  should  be  revoked  except  in  inns,  hotels  and 
restaurants.  In  order  for  a  No-License  Resolution  to  be 
adopted,  fifty-five  per  cent,  of  the  votes  cast  had  to  be  in 
favor  of  it  instead  of  a  bare  majority;  and  this  fifty-five 
per  cent,  had  to  represent  thirty-five  per  cent,  of  the  total 
number  of  registered  voters.  Votes  cast  for  No-License,  if 
No-License  failed,  were  added  to  the  votes  for  the  Limiting 
Resolution;  and  a  bare  majority  of  the  votes  cast  were 
sufficient  to  carry  Limitation — provided  they  represented 
thirty-five  per  cent,  of  the  registered  voters. 

The  city  of  Glasgow  was  one  of  the  first  places  in  Scot- 
land to  vote.  There  are  thirty-seven  voting  areas  in  Glas- 
gow. Four  of  these  areas — all  of  them  suburban  residential 
sections — went  No  License  by  very  narrow  margins;  nine 
more  areas,  also  suburban,  narrowly  failed  to  get  the 
required  fifty-five  per  cent,  and  went  into  the  Limitation 
column;  and  the  remaining  twenty-four  areas,  including  all 
of  the  slum  districts,  voted  firmly  for  No  Change.  Out  of 
the  1,604  licenses  in  the  city,  only  ninety-nine  were  sup- 
pressed. The  Glasgow  Herald,  leading  morning  paper  of 
the  city,  commented  on  the  result  by  remarking  "it  is  espe- 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  353 

cially  disappointing  that  the  working-class  population  has 
so  consistently  voted  No  Change.  They  are  the  chief  suf- 
ferers from  the  culpably  excessive  manner  in  which  tempta- 
tions are  crowded  upon  them;  their  homes  are  darkened, 
their  lives  embittered  and  their  brains  impoverished  by  con- 
ditions which,  however  created  and  perpetuated,  are  now 
controllable  by  their  own  agency.  It  is  a  dismal  reflection 
on  democracy  that,  when  the  chance  is  offered  for  escape 
from  Egyptian  bondage,  it  can  not  rise  above  habits  that  are 
enfeebling  and  always  degrading." 

The  Temperance  workers  had  made  their  hardest  fight 
in  Glasgow;  and  the  result,  to  put  it  bluntly,  was  a  com- 
plete fizzle.  Not  a  single  bad  ward  went  dry;  so  that  in 
1924 — since  three  years  must,  by  the  provisions  of  the  Tem- 
perance Act,  elapse  before  these  same  areas  can  vote  again 
on  the  question — there  will  be  no  shining  example  of  Prohi- 
bition's benefits  at  which  the  Drys  can  point  with  pride. 

The  Drys  declare  that  they  are  not  down-hearted.  They 
say  that  their  first  year  of  voting  brought  them  more  and 
better  results  than  were  ever  obtained  in  any  country  on  a 
first  Local  Option  vote.  They  point  proudly  to  the  Glasgow 
figures:  182,860  for  No  Change;  8,449  f°r  Limitation  and 
142,328  for  No  License.  All  they  need  to  do,  they  point  out. 
is  to  swing  ten  per  cent,  of  the  Wets  over  to  the  Dry  side  in 
order  to  effect  a  tremendous  swing  to  the  Prohibition  side 
of  the  fence.  The  same  thing  was  true  of  all  Scotland. 

Two  hundred  and  fifty-three  voting  areas  had  voted 
when  I  left  Scotland.  Two  hundred  and  six  had  voted  No 
Change;  twenty-four  had  voted  Limitation  and  twenty- 
three  had  voted  No  License. 

The  Wets  lost  a  few  districts,  but  they  always  had  good 
explanations  for  all  their  losses.  In  fact,  they  out-alibied 


354  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

Alibi  Ike.  They  were  badly  jolted  when  the  town  of  Cam- 
buslang,  heavily  populated  by  steel  workers  and  miners, 
went  dry.  I  asked  them  about  it.  They  explained  by  saying 
that  in  the  first  place  the  laborers  were  peevish  at  the  pub 
owners  for  not  selling  them  all  the  liquor  they  wanted  during 
the  war,  and  that  they  had  consequently  voted  No  License 
to  spite  the  pub  owners.  In  the  second  place,  extreme  labor 
agitators  had  got  among  the  workmen  and  filled  them  with 
radical  notions.  The  Wets  have  it  firmly  fixed  in  their  heads 
that  the  extremists  see  Social  Unrest  in  Prohibition,  and  that 
in  Social  Unrest  the  extremists  see  the  desired  revolution. 
Consequently  the  extremists  use  Prohibition  as  the  means  to 
their  end.  Kilsythe,  inhabited  largely  by  coal  miners  and 
industrial  workers,  is  a  hotbed  of  extreme  Socialism,  say 
the  Wets.  It  went  dry,  they  claim,  because  the  labor  leaders 
openly  preached  using  Prohibition  as  a  stepping  stone  to 
revolution.  One  ward  in  Clydebank,  the  big  shipping  town 
where  the  Aquitania  was  built,  went  dry.  The  Wets  swear 
that  it  was  the  one  radical,  red-hot  Bolshevik  ward  in  the 
town. 

Auchterarder  is  a  pleasant  agricultural  and  fruit-grow- 
ing town  and  is  the  home  of  Lord  Haldane,  Lord  Chancellor 
of  Great  Britain  when  the  Temperance  (Scotland)  Act 
became  a  law.  Auchterarder  turned  up  in  the  dry  column. 
The  name  sounded  intriguing,  so  I  took  it  up  with  the  Wets. 
"This  place  must  be  a  hotbed  of  Bolsheviks,  don't  you 
think?"  I  asked  them. 

They  doubted  it. 

"Then  why  is  it  dry?"  I  asked. 

The  Master  of  Explanations  for  the  Wets  stepped  briskly 
to  the  fore.  "In  Auchterarder,"  he  said,  "they  just  simply 
couldn't  see  any  reason  for  fear.  They  didn't  think  there 


SCOTLAND  FOR  SCOTCH  355 

was  a  possibility  of  the  town  going  dry.  Auchterarder  was 
just  like  America;  and  that's  why  she  got  it  in  the  throat, 
as  you  Americans  say.  Do  you  know,  it  wasn't  until  two 
weeks  before  the  election  that  the  Liquor  Interests  in  Auch- 
terarder made  any  sort  of  fight.  What  I  mean,  they 
wouldn't — just  actually  wouldn't.  They  couldn't  conceive 
of  anything  going  dry.  There  are  four  license  holders  in 
Auchterarder,  and  two  of  the  beggars  actually  forgot  to  go 
and  vote!  Couldn't  do  a  thing  with  them,  what  I  mean. 
Then  the  ministers  there  are  very  strong — oh,  very  strong. 
And  a  residential  district  in  the  main.  Beastly  situation, 
what?" 

I  went  over  to  see  the  Drys  about  Auchterarder.  I  ran 
into  a  conclave  of  Scotchmen  who  eyed  me  calmly. 

"They  tell  me  that  the  Wets  made  no  fight  in  Auchter- 
arder," I  informed  them. 

"Did  they  so?"  replied  one  of  the  Scotchmen. 

"I'm  asking  you,"  said  I. 

"They  did,"  said  the  Scotchman.  "They  made  a  gude 
fight,  if  you  want  to  call  it  that.  They  had  the  place  fair 
covered  with  posters  saying  we  intended  to  make  Scotland  a 
place  where  there'd  be  no  smoking  or  dancing  or  football  or 
theaters,  and  all  the  rest  of  their  stuff.  They  held  open- 
air  meetings,  and  they  called  us  as  many  names  as  they'd 
call  us  on  Argyle  Street." 

"Then  why  did  you  win  ?"  I  asked. 

"Well-nigh  pairfect  organization,"  replied  the  Scotch- 
man. "Well-nigh  pairfect  organization!" 

His  statement  bears  out — in  part — a  summing  up  which 
an  unaf filiated  resident  of  Glasgow  made  for  me ;  and  this 
is  the  summing  up : 


356  WHY  EUROPE  LEAVES  HOME 

If  Scotland  had  gone  dry,  America  would  stay  dry  with- 
out any  question.  If  America  goes  back  to  wetness,  or  even 
to  dampness,  there  is  scarcely  any  power  on  earth  that  can 
make  Scotland  dry.  If  America  stays  dry  and  the  Wets 
slacken  their  fight,  Scotland  will  go  dry  as  sure  as  shooting 
in  Central  Europe.  If  the  Wets  hadn't  been  so  well  organ- 
ized, Scotland  would  have  gone  dry  in  1920.  And  if  the 
Drys  ever  have  access  to  half  as  large  a  campaign  fund  as 
the  Wets — and  America  still  stays  dry — then  farewell. 
Scotch  whisky. 

THE  END 


UC  KXlTXWt  NfOOMM.  LflMMIv 


A    000672316    7 


